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ISRAEL 

FROM EDEN TO THE CITY OF OOD 




SAMUEL GREENWOOD 






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FOOTSTEPS OF ISRAEL 



By faith Abraham, when he was called to go out 
into a place which he should after receive for an 
inheritance, obeyed; and he went out, not knowing 
whither he went. 

By faith he sojourned in the land of promise, as 
in a strange country, dwelling in tabernacles with 
Isaac and Jacob, the heirs with hira of the same 
promise : 

For he looked for a city which hath foundations, 
whose builder and maker is God. 

— Hebrews ii :8-io. 



FOOTSTEPS OF ISRAEL 

FROM EDEN TO THE CITY OF GOD 



B 



SAMUEL GREENWOOD 



BOSTON 

A. A. BEAUCHAMP 

1922 






Copyright, ig22. 
By a. a. Beauchamp 



All rights renewed in all countries. 
Imperial and International Copyright secured. 



Published December, 1922 
Printed in the United States of America 



The University Press, Cambridge, Mass. 

DEC14?2 

©C1A690573 



This Book 

is joyously inscribed to its 
unprejudiced readers 



CONTENTS 

PAGB 

Introduction ix 

I Paradise Lost; or the Dream of Mate- 
rialism I 

II The Woman and the Serpent 14 

III The Early Morning of History .... 22 

IV The Rise of Israel 30 

V The Meaning of "Israel" 41 

VI Joseph and Judah 51 

VII From Horeb to the Red Sea 62 

VIII The Covenants in the Wilderness ... 75 

IX Proving the Word of the Lord .... 88 

X The Nation in the Making 100 

XI The Covenant of Possession iii 

XII The Perils of Disobedience 122 

XIII The Coming of Prophets and Kings. . . 133 

XIV The Throne of David 143 

XV A House Divided 154 

XVI In Exile 163 

XVII "The Times of the Gentiles" 175 

XVIII The Covenant of Prophecy 185 

XIX The God of Israel 196 

XX The Rise of Christianity 208 

XXI The Woman Driven to the Wilderness . 219 



viii CONTENTS 



PAGE 



XXII Emerging from Obscurity 232 

XXIII The Hebrew Scriptures . 243 

XXIV Israel's Restoration in Prophecy .... 251 
XXV At the Threshold of Fulfilment . . . 263 

XXVI Anglo-Israel: the Second Witness ... 275 

XXVII Israel's New Covenant 288 

XXVIII Armageddon, AND After 306 

XXIX The First and^ Second Commandments of 

Israel 318 

XXX "A Light to Lighten the Gentiles" . .329 
XXXI Paradise Regained, or the Dream Dis- 
pelled 336 



INTRODUCTION 

THE excuse for adding another volume to the world's 
already overburdened bookshelf must be looked for 
within the volume itself, for the justification or value 
of a book can only be rightly determined by its influence 
upon the thoughts of its readers. While a book may be 
welcomed by one individual for its helpfulness or good 
cheer, it may be rejected as useless by another; so that 
the only fixed rule upon which all agree in the judgment 
of books is the viewpoint of the reader. Thus, because 
of the wide disparity in literary tastes, and the almost 
hopeless divergence of religious opinions and convictions, 
few books, if any, find a universal response, and the 
reader must elect to browse where he likes the pasture. 
But points of view are open to revision, and one may 
discover that a change of pasture turns out to be both 
nourishing and delightful; thus our one fixed rule van- 
ishes, and a book is left to make its way according to 
what it has to give. 

All books that merit consideration may, in a general 
way, be divided into two classes : those which entertain 
and those which enlighten and bless ; in other words, the 
books which are designed to beguile the thoughts of their 
readers from the weight of worldly care, and thus make 
existence outside the walls of the Heavenly City tem- 
porarily more endurable; and the books which stimulate 
the reader to seek an entrance through its gates, or which 
aid those who are already making that endeavor. The 
author modestly hopes that, by some at least, this volume 
will be placed among the latter class. 

The following pages are the outgrowth of Bible study, 
undertaken during late years for the special purpose of 
tracing the rise, development, and course of that great 
spiritual movement spoken of in the Scriptures under the 
name of Israel, and at the same time of arriving at a 



X FOOTSTEPS OF ISRAEL 

better understanding of the relation which undoubtedly 
exists between prophecy and history, particularly with 
reference to the present period and events. While it is 
true that no denomination is a unit on the question of 
Israel's identity in the present day, or of the facts and 
conditions of her restoration, or even in an interest in 
these things, Jesus invested the prophetic Scriptures with 
an importance and a value which should not now be 
covered with the veil of indifference, nor should the 
Christians of this period be called '^slow of heart to 
believe all that the prophets have spoken." 

While the author's attitude towards some of the dog- 
mas which have come down from the time of the early 
Church Fathers may be challenged by some of his 
readers, his attitude is not, he believes, inconsistent with 
the fundamental truth about Deity which we find at the 
highest points of Scriptural revelation. The present de- 
mand, as it was in the days of the apostles, is not to cling 
blindly to the humanly formulated beliefs into which we 
may have been educated, but to "prove all things," and 
to " hold fast that which is good." These are days when 
theories and teachings which do not glorify God in His 
infinite nature, and which are not capable of producing 
the highest form of practical Christianity, will have to 
be "overturned" that the way of the Lord may be pre- 
pared and His name sanctified before all people. 

It is naturally self-evident that the errors of human 
thought and life can be corrected only by a perception of 
and obedience to Truth ; it cannot be accomplished by the 
worship of any personality however exalted. The cov- 
enants of Israel, from the first, have been based upon 
obedience, not upon an irresponsible belief in Deity, nor 
a dependent faith in another's goodness. It must some- 
time be learned that an adherence to religious doctrines, 
opinions, or creeds, however sincerely accepted and main- 
tained, is absolutely powerless to bring a realization of 
the new birth into human experience, and without this 
realization there is no way by which human beings can 
enter the kingdom of heaven. 



INTRODUCTION xi 

The reason for beginning with the story of Eden is 
that Israel was conceived there, ahhough not brought 
forth to human view until many centuries later; and the 
course of that movement, in its redemptive journey 
through the ages, must be properly considered as having 
its starting-point in the experience which that story illus- 
trates. It is certain that all that is vitally related to 
human welfare lies between that first glimpse of Divine 
law, which laid bare both the sinfulness and the deceit- 
fulness of sin, and the final awakening of mankind to 
the consciousness of God as the All-in-all. The time be- 
tween these points is the moral and spiritual distance be- 
tween lost Eden and the New Jerusalem, and it is across 
this distance where the footsteps of Israel are to be found. 

Israel's unique place among the nations, as the guar- 
dian of the spiritual hope of the world, gave to her history 
a meaning and an interest which have never faded, and 
we find her today more conspicuous in the thoughts of 
Christendom than any other race or people, although 
largely in the sense of an extinct rather than as an exist- 
ing nation. Yet the Scriptures state, in most unmistak- 
able terms, that Israel is to return to her place in the 
family of nations and carry out the mission originally 
assigned to her, so that according to these Scriptural 
statements, we should think of this people not as hope- 
lessly buried in the grave of oblivion but as about to enact 
the greatest chapter of their history. The restoration of 
Israel is the culminating event in Old Testament proph- 
ecy, an event which was not questioned but confirmed 
by New Testament writers ; and we today should begin to 
open our eyes to the imminence and significance of its 
fulfilment, synchronizing as it does with the second ad- 
vent of the Christ. The present is a period of fulfilment 
more than of prophecy. The final act in human redemp- 
tion, and the closing scenes of mortal history, were long 
since foreseen and foretold, and we should now con- 
fidently look for the presence of that " Spirit of truth " 
whose coming was promised by Christ Jesus, and which 
alone can " restore all things." 



xii FOOTSTEPS OF ISRAEL 

Israel is the earliest distinguishing title on record of 
purely spiritual significance, and that spiritual significance 
has not been divorced from a right use of the word, but 
is as closely related to the salvation of our race as at any 
past period, and is destined to continue thus until the con- 
summation of the human struggle for spiritual freedom 
and regeneration. Ages of ignorance and superstition 
did not prevent the appearance of Israel when the oppor- 
tunity came, and its divine nature and source precluded 
the possibility of its extinction in the Assyrian captivity 
or in the subsequent exile. 

The spiritual illuminations and revelations which came 
to Israel in her distant yesterdays were not left behind in 
the human march; they have remained to light the way 
to higher things for all who seek to know God aright. 
No one has had a proprietary interest in truth which can- 
not be shared by every other human being, when the point 
is reached where it can be perceived and understood. 
When the angel said tO' Jacob, " Thy name shall hence- 
forth be called Israel," it is apparent, by the after use of 
the word, that it was intended as the designation of a type 
or quality of thought, rather than as the name of 
any one man, family, or nation. The spiritual character- 
istics which began to appear in Shem, Abraham, Jacob, 
and others, indicated that the line or race which was de- 
veloping from them would be distinctively representative 
of the seed of the woman, and would bear the light of 
spiritual truth to all mankind. 

The fundamental teaching of the oneness of God, 
which Jesus embodied in Christianity, was received 
through the patriarchs and prophets of Israel. There has 
been no Gentile medium of revelation. The spiritual idea 
of Deity, which came to light in the consciousness of that 
people, and which progressed there until its fuller appear- 
ing in Christianity, was not duplicated elsewhere. The 
perception in Israel of the one true God was the lens or 
focusing-point through which all divine revelation has 
reached humanity. Naaman the Syrian touched the se- 
cret of the world's interest in this subject when he said, 



INTRODUCTION xiii 

"Now I know there is no God in all the earth but in 
Israel." And this God of Israel, since that long past day 
of Naaman's healing, has. become more and more widely 
acknowledged as the only God in all the earth, beside 
whom there is no other, defined by Christ Jesus, the 
Anointed of Israel, as the " one good " ; and into this one- 
ness of divinity every human being must sometime find 
his way, no matter what he may now call himself nation- 
ally or religiously. 

Modern discoveries are inclining scientists to the con- 
clusion that time and space are merely relative conditions, 
and not the fixed measurements we have hitherto sup- 
posed. This fact was declared ages ago by the Psalmist, 
when he said, " A thousand years in Thy sight are but as 
yesterday when it is past, and as a watch in the night." 
The long exile of Israel, running concurrently with the 
"times of the Gentiles," was a mental experience, and 
can be measured only superficially in terms of years. It 
was a space in which to wrestle with and overcome the 
temptation of false gods, and thus to prepare for the 
work which had been assigned to Israel before her na- 
tionhood began. This exile or captivity did not mean the 
end of Israel as a people any more than his sojourn in a 
" far country " meant the end of the prodigal son as an 
individual. No other nation arose to replace Israel, and 
we have no record or intimation of the adoption of any 
other people in her stead. 

The " day of the Lord " neither begins nor ends, but 
to human sense, groping for ages amid the darkness 
of its materialism, it will come as the dawning of 
morning. We may rejoice that the distant beams of 
ihat morning are becoming dimly visible through the dis- 
Lurbances and the fears which mark the breaking up of 
the old order. To those whose faces are turned towards 
the "City of God," and who would spend a few hours 
in contemplation of the footsteps along the way, this 
book is offered with the cordial Godspeed of a fellow 
pilgrim. 



Abraham rejoiced to see my day: and he saw it, and 
was glad. 

Then said the Jews unto him, Thou art not yet fifty 
years old, and hast thou seen Abraham? 

Jesus said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, 
Before Abraham was, I am. — John 8:56-58. 

" Christ's Christianity is the chain of scientific being 
reappearing in all ages, maintaining its obvious corre- 
spondence with the Scriptures and imiting all periods 
in the design of God." — Mary Baker Eddy, 



FOOTSTEPS OF ISRAEL 

CHAPTER I 
Paradise Lost; or the Dream of Materialism 

Shall the dust praise Thee ? shall it declare Thy truth ? 
— Ps. 30:9. 

Cease ye from man, whose breath is in his nostrils : 
for wherein is he to be accounted of? — Isa. 2:22. 

THE course and destiny of that remarkable race 
which had its rise in Abraham, the great pioneer of 
monotheism, and which was later identified by the 
name of Israel, constitute the central feature of the his- 
tory of nations, because God's revelations were given to 
men through that people. These revelations, attested by 
ample proof, and preserved in the Hebrew sacred writ- 
ings, have been, and are still today, the inspiration of 
enlightened progress and the foundation of regenerative 
religion. The footsteps of Israel, therefore, are the foot- 
steps of humanity spiritually awakening to the facts of 
divinity. 

" Search the Scriptures," said Jesus, because " they are 
they which testify of me," — of "Immanuel," "the Son 
of the Highest," the hope and promise and glory of Is- 
rael, the light which was to lighten the Gentiles, the 
Saviour of the world. " The testimony of Jesus," wrote 
St. John the Revelator, " is the spirit of prophecy " ; and 
the testimony of Jesus was, that he was the Son of God. 
The one objective of Scriptural teaching, the final goal 
towards which all prophecy and revelation point, is the 
attainment of that universal understanding of God in 
which Jesus' testimony will be seen to be true, not of 
one individual only, but of every man. 



2 FOOTSTEPS OF ISRAEL 

Israel has a sound of sweet melody, because it was 
first voiced to human ears from the lips of an angel, and 
has never lost its heavenly tone. It is found in that 
quality of htiman thought which, like Jacob, is seeking 
to know God, and which is rising, however slowly and 
painfully, towards the consciousness of spiritual life. 
Israel, in its national and spiritual aspects, was the ab- 
sorbing theme of the Scriptural writers. They dwelt 
lovingly upon the past glories and the future greatness 
of- the people who were to be " a peculiar treasure" unto 
the Lord, the while, in all honesty, they exposed their 
weaknesses and shortcomings. They pointed to the great 
destiny which lay before them as God's " witnesses " in 
the earth, while in humiliation they mourned over the 
national apostasy. They turned from the shame and sor- 
row of the captivity to contemplate the bright vision of 
the restoration. Although Israel was to be known, in a 
distinguishing sense, as the people of God, the patriarchs 
and prophets never lost sight of the fact that the seal and 
confirmation of that exalted relationship lay in their 
fidelity to His covenants. 

The Biblical records naturally begin with God. The 
opening sentence, in its evident intent, affirms that God 
is the one origin or source of all things, and that there 
was nothing before Him. If one w^ould grasp the full 
significance of that divine revelation, which extends in 
an arc of glory from the first to the last verses of the 
Bible, marking the completed course of human redemp- 
tion, ever lighting the way to the kingdom of heaven, 
but never mingling with the shadows of earthly delu- 
sions; if one would catch the unbroken sweep of that 
wonderful vision, as it came to patriarch and prophet, 
Messiah and apostle, he must begin his mental journey at 
that same point of recognition, and keep that encircling 
bow of divinity ever in view. 

Although we may not yet have learned all that is in- 
volved in the first sentence of the Bible, and in St. John's 
statement that "without Him was not anything made," 
we should know this much, that the fatal mistake of the 



PARADISE LOST 3 

ages has been in relinquishing that position, and in taking 
the stand of the materiahst, that without Him many 
things are made. The plain teaching of the Scriptures is, 
that whatever does not lead human thought to know 
God as the one Cause, the universal Father, must some- 
where in the line of progress be discovered to be false and 
useless; for the consciousness of enduring life and joy is 
not to be found outside the knowledge of God and of 
His Son. 

Continuing our reading of the opening chapter of Gen- 
esis, we come to the most important statement concerning 
man which human language records, namely, that he was 
created in the image of God. Nothing greater could be 
said of man, and nothing less would be consistent with 
his Divine source. To lift humanity to the realization of 
this divine relationship is the plain purpose of the atone- 
ment, and the end of Biblical prophecy and revelation. 
This inspired utterance unites man to God beyond the 
possibility of separation. It declares the eternality of 
God's likeness or manifestation, since the phrase " in the 
beginning," in relation to God and His image, is equivalent 
to no beginning. In the words credited to an early Chris- 
tian writer, " There certainly was not a time when God 
was not the Father." The creative intelligence w^hich 
we name God necessarily expressed His own thoughts in 
man and the universe, since there was no other creative 
consciousness, so that what we call creation is simply the 
manifestation of the Creator's own being and nature, 
and not an aggregation of things foreign to Himself and 
independent of His government. 

The simple record of the six days of divine unfold- 
ment with which the Bible opens, presents the ideal uni- 
verse, the new earth and heaven, and the new man, 
towards the perception of which human sense has been 
slowly moving. This first record has stood, and must 
so stand to the end, for that perfection of things which 
is to appear when time has run its full course, when the 
realities of being shall no longer be seen " in a glass 
darkly " but face to face. Thus one may see, as in 



4 f:ootsteps of Israel 

prophetic vision, the coincidence of the first and last 
chapters of the Bible, not as the bringing in of a new or 
unknown state, but as the awakening to the reality of 
things as they have always been. 

In the story of the garden of Eden, which closely fol- 
lows the first record of creation, but which is gener- 
ally understood to be of different authorship, we find a 
second statement concerning man, a statement which is 
as ignoble as the first is glorious — namely, that he was 
formed of " the dust of the ground." In the first instance 
man is described as the imaging forth of Deity. His 
nature and character, therefore, partake of and express 
divinity, and could have no possible affinity with evil. 
This second statement, however, unequivocally represents 
man as evil, as that which is God's unlikeness, a creature 
of the earth, not of heaven, whose nature is sensual and 
sinful, and whose inherent depravity absolutely dissoci- 
ates him from any divine origin. One cannot conceive 
that the likeness of God should possess an evil sense, and 
because it is inconceivable we should know that it is 
impossible. 

Thus at the very outset of human history we encounter 
the highest and the lowest concepts of both Creator and 
creation. Theologians and others have presumed to de- 
clare and to teach that these contrary statements are iden- 
tical, with the result that mortals have come to think of 
the Creator as a being of like passions as themselves, and 
of His image as originally but a clod of earth which later 
developed into a depraved mind. The very natural result 
of teaching the unity of these opposite descriptions of 
man has been to leave the first out of sight as having no 
present application to human salvation, and to honor the 
dust of the ground as th^ basic factor in creation. This 
has necessarily perpetur. ^ed a very humanized conception 
of Deity, and a far from helpful conception of His gov- 
ernment as virtually subordinate to an inferior power. 

" What must I do to be saved ? " has been the age-long 
appeal of humanity. Oppressed and tormented by the 
bestial instincts and propensities too common to the race, 



PARADISE LOST 5 

mortals have been encouraged to submit to these con- 
ditions on the ground that they were derived from their 
primeval parents ; but these evils v^ere not inherited from 
the pure offspring of Deity. The great fear, v^hich 
weighs so heavily and universally upon human conscious- 
ness that it has been named the " king of terrors," did not 
originate in the revealed truth of man's likeness to God, 
but in the opposite teaching, that man is material and sin- 
ful. Believing that the earth is the universal mother of 
men, and that the " dust of the ground " constitutes their 
natural condition, it is held to be inevitable that men must 
return to dust again. Here, then, in the generally ac- 
cepted theory that man originates and exists materially, 
and possesses a nature and consciousness unlike the di- 
vine, lies the necessity for a Saviour and a Deliverer, so 
that one need not be a prophet to see along what line 
human redemption must come and upon what basis it 
must be worked out. 

The problem of salvation is, therefore, as old as hu- 
manity. From the beginning of time, according to the 
Hebrew calendar, we find the human mind in captivity, 
but a captivity so subtle as to be not recognized for what 
it is. Long accustomed to this " durance vile," disin- 
clined to resist its vanities and weaknesses, mortals have 
succumbed to the argument that materiality is man's 
normal and necessary state of being. From that stand- 
point of belief they are, by their own consent, both help- 
less and blind, — helpless because they will not leave their 
groveling in the dust, and blind because they will not lift 
their eyes above the flesh and see God. 

The perverted but too popular teaching, that the ma- 
teriality of man's origin and existence, which is presented 
in the second chapter of Genesis, us of God, and must be 
accepted as true and good, a teaching which has been un- 
lawfully imposed upon the unresisting because unen- 
lightened human mind, is the error that binds humanity 
to the chariot wheels of sensualism, and that entrenches 
evil, in the guise of nature, in the world's centers of edu- 
cation. It should be obvious that this error must be re- 



6 FOOTSTEPS OF ISRAEL 

versed and the human footsteps which have been wrongly 
taken be retraced, before the state of being indicated in 
the first chapter of Genesis can be consciously attained. 

Apparently, then, the redemption of mortals will not 
lie in their translation to some unknown and distant 
sphere, but in their spiritual transformation, or that proc- 
ess of mental correction alluded to by St. Paul, in which 
mortality, or the sense of life as material, is to be laid 
off or outgrown. In other words, it is the mental jour- 
ney, going on since Adam, by which human thought has 
been gradually advancing towards the apprehension of 
the truth of being as spiritual and divine. It is apparent 
that the prophet Isaiah perceived these things, for instead 
of adopting the orthodox opinion of his day, he bravely 
crossed swords with the legendary theory of man's crea- 
tion from dust. " Cease ye from man whose breath is in 
his nostrils," he said, " for wherein is he to be accounted 
of ? " plainly implying that such is not the kind of man 
which God created. 

Although popular theology has generally accepted the 
story of Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden as literal 
history, it is being viewed to an increasing extent in the 
light of an allegory, and we read that it was so regarded 
by some of the Jews of more modern times. St. Augus- 
tine believed the story to be historically true, but that it 
also embodied a spiritual meaning. It might be well to re- 
mind the reader at this point that the earlier books of the 
Bible, as we now have them, were compiled many cen- 
turies after the events recorded had taken place. In Gen- 
esis particularly we have the legends and traditions which 
had come down through many generations of the primi- 
tive Hebrews, and which were naturally more or less in- 
vested with the symbolism of a highly imaginative and 
poetic race. 

The story of Eden would appear to be the earliest of 
these legends of which we have record. Its language is 
plainly metaphorical, but it is not improbable that, as in 
the case of other legends, it arose from something rnore 
tangible than human imagination. It is indeed highly 



PARADISE LOST 7 

probable that about this time something transpired which 
so deeply stirred the human consciousness and became so 
strongly impressed upon the primitive thought of man- 
kind that it became accepted as the beginning of history. 
It has been long supposed that that event was the creation 
of man from '' the dust of the ground," but modern dis- 
covery and research have exposed the fallacy of that sup- 
position. It is now known that mortals inhabited the 
earth ages before the reputed time of Adam, although 
nothing has come down to us out of that practically un- 
known period to indicate any definite apprehension or 
perception of divinity, and without some clear recogni- 
tion of the law of good, history could have no legitimate 
starting-point. From a careful study of this and subse- 
quent Scripture, it would appear that what impressed it- 
self upon the thought of mankind at this time was the 
discovery, in a degree at least, of the distinction between 
good and evil ; in other words, there arose in human con- 
sciousness some dawning recognition of the law of God 
which unveiled the evil of evil. 

How this came about is related in the story. In her 
encounter with a serpent that could talk, evidently in- 
tended to explain the appeal of evil as a subtle sugges- 
tion, the woman became aware that an acceptance of what 
it urged upon her would be inconsistent with her recog- 
nition of God's demands. The language implies that 
while she perceived something of the source and nature 
of the temptation into which mankind had entered, she 
did not discover the way out of that mental captivity. The 
rising up in human thought of the supposition that there 
is something taking place outside the realm of good, 
something that has substance, intelligence, and power, 
was plainly what the serpent represented; so that what 
the woman from her higher standpoint of spiritual dis- 
cernment discovered was, that she, in common with other 
mortals before and since, had been beguiled into believ- 
ing what was not true. Thus interpreted the story can be 
readily understood as illustrating the process of evil in 
the thought and experience of every human being; 



8 FOOTSTEPS OF ISRAEL 

whereas its literal acceptance would leave one hopelessly 
stranded amid irreconcilable inconsistencies and absurdi- 
ties. 

Eve had begun to see, in a rather vague way, what St. 
Paul long afterwards saw clearly, that evil and the carnal 
mind are one. Therefore what the inhabitants of the 
garden were warned against was a wrong mental state; 
in other words, thinking falsely about God and man. 
From the opening sentence, " And there went up a mist," 
to the final expulsion from the garden, the story presents 
a delineation in metaphor of that spurious claim to con- 
sciousness which the Revelator describes as deceiving 
*'the whole world," which obviously means that the 
whole world is under the spell of the suggestion that 
good is not infinite and supreme, and is not, therefore, 
the whole of man's life. It is perfectly certain that 
the world would not be deceived in accepting the testi- 
mony of the serpent if that testimony were true. 

It is noteworthy that throughout this narrative the 
man of dust makes no claim of being godlike, nor do his 
speech and conduct indicate a divine origin or relation- 
ship. On the contrary, his inglorious record, right up to 
the present day, confirms the conclusion, beyond reason- 
able question, that Adam w^as not the man spoken of in 
the first chapter of Genesis as being the image of Deity. 
This was very clearly St. Paul's understanding when he 
counseled the Ephesians to "put off . . . the old man," 
for his advice would be nothing short of blasphemy if 
the " old man," or the Adam man, were of the same line- 
age as the " new man " or son of God. While ordinary 
theological teaching has interpreted the story of Eden as 
confirming the belief that God created man materially, 
this story is seen upon closer and unprejudiced study to 
point out the evil attaching to that belief. 

As described in the metaphor, the " deep sleep " which 
came upon Adam is undoubtedly symbolic of materialism, 
a view which would seem to be confirmed by some later 
Scriptural passages, for the story makes no reference to 
his awakening. This would be a serious omission, after 



PARADISE LOST 9 

such a momentous sleep, if the story were intended to be 
taken literally. Scholastic theology has made the rather 
clumsy mistake of ignoring this point entirely, for the 
great lesson of the allegory will be found to hinge upon 
it, inasmuch as it unmistakably teaches the unsubstan- 
tial nature of a so-called existence separate from God, 
as well as the suffering which must attend that supposi- 
tion. It is evident from the narrative that Adam was 
not awake to the truth of creation, in which man is the 
image of God, but was asleep in the dust of the ground. 
Even now, in this twentieth century, one has but to scan 
the record of events to realize that, for the great mass of 
mankind, that sleep has remained unbroken. Mortals 
are still dreaming that they are awake in the coils of the 
serpent of materialism, and attempting to hide their 
nakedness from God. For that matter we need look no 
further than our own mental life to discover how fast 
asleep we are, much of the time, to the heavenly facts 
of good, and how easily imposed upon by the sugges- 
tions of evil. It is very plain, therefore, that the man 
featured in this parable was not the expression of divin- 
ity, else materialism, with all that term includes, would 
be the verity of being, and the human hope of redemp- 
tion an eternal mockery. 

That sin, in its varying phases and degrees, is insepa- 
rable from the sensuous consciousness of mortals, is a 
lesson which may be gleaned from this parabolic story, 
and which we must learn if we would rightly understand 
the human problem of salvation. Because there is nothing 
in the spiritual sense of things which men ought not to 
know, or which could possibly separate them from God, 
or lead them into a sense of condemnation and guilt, we 
must naturally and necessarily turn to the fleshly or ma- 
terial sense to find the source of mortals' temptation and 
degradation. Evil is not something that exists and op- 
erates independent of the carnal mind: it is the carnal 
mind; and this identifies the serpent of Eden and the 
devil of the later Scriptures, neither as a snake nor as a 
man, but as that iniquitous sense which would hold men 



lo FOOTSTEPS OF ISRAEL 

to "the dust of the ground" as the center and circum- 
ference of their being. 

It is this physical sense, not the spiritual, which closes 
the eyes of mortals to the things of God, the unseen 
things which the apostle declared are eternal, the things 
which "eye hath not seen, nor ear heard." But if the 
material eye and ear do not cognize the things '' which 
God hath prepared for them that love Him," it naturally 
follows that these senses do not and cannot cognize 
the man and universe which He created, or made 
manifest. The only logical inference is, that what ap- 
pears to physical sense, not being the " things which God 
hath prepared," must be the phantasmagoria of a false 
and sinful sense, or the objectified thoughts of the so- 
called carnal mind, and not a divine creation at all. By 
what process of reason or fancy can one intelligently 
conceive of the grandeur and glory of the Infinite as ap- 
propriately expressed in a man made of dust, and a 
woman fashioned from a piece of his bone? Such gro- 
tesque figures may have a fitting place in the fairyland 
of Oz, where scarecrows talk and tin men go about, but 
to call them the work of God is to caricature His handi- 
work. Shakespeare caught a glimpse of the illusory 
nature of material things when he wrote, 

We are such stuff 
As dreams are made on. 

The story of Eden does not set a seal of degradation 
or of condemnation upon the man whom God created, as 
has been wrongly taught, but points to the mistake and 
the folly of giving evil a place in consciousness. It shows 
also that mortal and sensuous existence, as set forth in 
the creation, temptation, and demoralization of the man 
of dust, is of the false nature of a dream, a dream, how- 
ever, of years and centuries and millenniums, and which 
still waits to be dispelled at the full appearing of the 
Christ. The psalmist of Israel who sang, "^I shall be 
satisfied when I awake, with Thy likeness," evidently did 
not look upon materiality as the truth of his being. 



PARADISE LOST il 

There are a number of appeals in the Scriptures to 
awaken. '' Sleeper, awake, arise from the dead, and the 
Christ shall give thee light," urged the apostle. (Eph. 
5 : 14, Twentieth Century New Testament.) But why the 
call to awake, if one's mundane experiences represent the 
reality of his being! And why the call to arise from 
the dead if life inheres in matter! Nothing can be more 
obvious or certain than this, that if a material sense of 
persons and things expresses the reality of God's crea- 
tion, then men are not asleep in that sense but awake, and 
man's immortality would consequently and necessarily 
be a myth. 

Returning to the story, we find the woman and the 
man falling victims to the argument that evil w^as some- 
thing they were privileged to know, and that to know 
it would enlarge their understanding and increase their 
prestige. The serpent insinuated that God had deceived 
them in limiting their consciousness to good alone. The 
bitter experience that followed apparently opened their 
eyes to the error into which they had been led. The fruit 
of this false knowledge was found to be fear and shame 
and suffering; and they heard, as it seemed to them, the 
voice of God pronouncing a curse upon the participants 
in this great tragedy. Henceforward, in sorrow and 
trouble, mortals were to struggle with their material 
thoughts of life, until the seed of the woman should ulti- 
mately destroy all sense of materiality. 

The point of this parable is plainly not limited to an- 
cient times. Notwithstanding the sorrows of human ex- 
perience, the mistake of Adam and Eve is being repeated 
by mortals today. If the inhabitants of the garden had 
the prerogative to maintain their sense of good intact, 
without entering into a knowledge of evil, men and 
women have still the same prerogative. It is dishonest, 
therefore, to condemn Adam and Eve for being enticed 
by the serpent's suggestions, when we are doing precisely 
the same thing. If evil in the year one, or at the begin- 
ning of recorded time, was the delusive belief that man's 
life and intelligence are not God, Spirit, but something 



12 FOOTSTEPS OF ISRAEL 

else, liable to change to imbecility and death, it is the 
same lie still, and it will continue to be so, and to impose 
its delusions upon men, until they acknowledge and obey 
only the Mind which was in Christ Jesus. 

"The fruit of that forbidden tree" which, in the 
words of Milton, " brought death into the world and all 
our woe," was not an apple, or any other form of earthly 
fruit, but a mental experience. It was the human partak- 
ing of or entering into a sense of being that was entirely 
foreign to God and His creation. St. Paul properly 
classified this delusive sense of things as the fleshly mind, 
or the mind that finds its consciousness in matter. " The 
carnal mind," the apostle writes, " is enmity against 
God," thus identifying materiality with the loss of para- 
dise, and with all human error. His preceding statement, 
*' to be spiritually minded is life and peace," full of pro- 
found and glorious significance, reveals the all-important 
fact, which Christendom has largely overlooked, that 
paradise can be regained only as men turn from ma- 
terial-mindedness to spiritual-mindedness. We should 
maintain the classification of consciousness given in the 
Scripture just quoted, and no longer affirm that evil is 
properly any legitimate part of human knowledge. 

The Bible from cover to cover is a condemnation of the 
carnal mind. Nowhere within its pages is the dust of the 
ground likened to the being of Deity or to His likeness. 
At no point do the sacred records endow the flesh with 
the qualities and substance of divinity. The influence of 
materiality in human experience has never disclosed the 
faintest trace of the heavenly, but on the contrary it has 
ever proved the means and the medium of evil. The ser- 
pent's nefarious machinations in beguiling the hearts of 
men in this year of our Lord in nowise differ from its 
nefarious machinations in the garden of Eden. Submis- 
sion to materialism still shuts human consciousness out 
of paradise, and the earth accordingly brings forth its 
thorns and thistles, while mortals continue to earn their 
bread by the sweat of their brows. 

" Except a man be born again," said Jesus, " he cannot 



PARADISE LOST 13 

see the kingdom of God," clearly teaching that the man 
of dust is not the man which came forth from God, else 
a second birth would not be required of him. We read 
also in Isaiah, '' Behold, I create new heavens and a new 
earth : and the former shall not be remembered, nor come 
into mind," — but wherefore should they not be remem- 
bered if God created them? and why the necessity for 
new heavens and earth if what materially appears is the 
truth about them? *' What God doeth, it shall stand 
for ever," says the Scripture. Of a surety, the human 
sense of materiality, with its perpetual round of sorrow 
and trouble, can be nothing more substantial than the 
"deep sleep" of Adam, from which Christianity, under- 
stood and made practical, is the awakening. 



CHAPTER II 

The Woman and the Serpent 

And the Lord God said unto the serpent, ... I will 
put enmity between thee and the woman, and between 
thy seed and her seed. — Gen. 3 : 14, 15. 

And the dragon was wroth with the woman, and went 
to make war with the remnant of her seed, which keep 
the commandments of God, and have the testimony of 
Jesus Christ. — Rev. 12:17. 

A FACT which cannot safely be overlooked in taking 
up the study of Israel in its broader aspects, and 
one that cannot logically be separated from the 
prophecies relating to the latter days, is that the move- 
ment of the human consciousness towards its ultimate 
freedom from evil began with woman. It was the 
woman in the story, not the man, who recognized the 
character of evil and its method of attack; therefore it 
was the woman, not the man, towards whom the enmity 
of the serpent was directed. " I will put enmity between 
thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed," 
and then follows that first great prophecy of Scripture, 
which includes in itself all subsequent prophecy, that the 
seed of the w^oman should bruise the serpent's head, or, 
in other words, destroy the carnal mind. 

In this announcement woman's destiny, as the channel 
through which a redemptive knowledge of the truth is to 
reach mankind, is set forth in unmistakable terms. This 
should be kept well in mind for it is the key to the ulti- 
mate fulfilment of the prophetic Word. In the story the 
man apparently had not awakened to any feeling of en- 
mity towards the serpent, and would, seem to symbolize 
that purely physical sense of being which is fully at home 
in the body. He represented that state of mortal thought 
which is too much in sympathy with materiality to dis- 
cern its evil nature, or to make any sustained protest 



THE WOMAN AND THE SERPENT 15 

against its influence. On the other hand, the fact that 
woman first expressed that higher quahty of thought 
which called forth the enmity of evil should not only 
establish her advanced moral and spiritual status, but her 
logical leadership in moral and spiritual reform. 

One has but to read the history of nations, from the 
standpoint of their treatment of woman, to have this view 
confirmed. It will be found that the most spiritually en- 
lightened nations are those which accord to woman the 
freest opportunity to express her rightful place in the 
universe. In the proportion that woman's equality in all 
ways with man has been acknowledged and given un- 
obstructed scope, the moral tone of the national life has 
invariably improved. On the other hand, other things 
being equal, the most benighted and spiritually unpro- 
gressive peoples are those who treat their women as in- 
feriors. Woman's right to fulfil her high mission has 
been opposed at every turn by the sensual egotism of the 
mortal man, expressing its evil will in despotism and 
slavery. Unquestionably, the only possible true democracy 
must include the acknowledgment of woman's equality 
with man, not as a favor, but as an inherent right. 

That which has stood and still stands in the way of 
the moral betterment of the race is the sensual apathy 
of the man who is "of the earth, earthy"; and after six 
thousand years following the Edenic prophecy, it is 
highly significant that the enmity of evil is still directed 
against the woman and her seed, against her high place 
in prophetic fulfilment, and her spiritual leadership in the 
work of bruising the serpent's head. 

It is apparent upon the face of the narrative that " the 
woman " and her seed meant something far greater than 
the person of Eve, or her natural offspring, and that was 
the awakening discernment of spiritual being which un- 
covered the truth about her tempter, and the increase of 
that spiritual discernment in human consciousness. The 
logical inference from the story is, that woman stands 
highest in the order of creation, and is therefore more 
susceptible to spiritual impressions or intuitions, so that it 



1 6 FOOTSTEPS OF ISRAEL 

was perfectly natural she should be the first to recognize 
the claims of the carnal sense as something which ought 
not to be admitted. Eve's discovery, that she was lured 
into a state of error through a mesmeric subtlety, other- 
wise spoken of as the serpent, could only have come about 
through some recognition, however faint, of the purity 
of God's creation, and this germ of spiritual awakening 
was to increase until it would finally displace a sense of 
evil in human consciousness. The true idea, thus dimly 
perceived, was, undoubtedly, the seed of the woman, and 
it grew and unfolded and increased until it reached its 
full blossom in Christianity, finally to express its perfect 
fruition at the coming of the Comforter. 

This exposure of the nature of evil brought with it its 
condemnation, and the prediction of its final destruction. 
It is full of meaning that evil is neither named nor implied 
in the Elohistic account of creation, while in the story 
which follows, it appears only as a condition of mental 
deception, in which the opposite of good takes on a sem- 
blance of intelligence and life; and this error or delusion 
is to run its course in human belief until its fraudulence 
shall be fully unmasked. Popular religious teaching ob- 
scures the full glory of this prophecy, because it main- 
tains that this opposite of God, instead of being entirely 
erroneous, is itself a self-conscious entity, possessing 
eternality of power and being. The most that this teach- 
ing can be said to offer is that eventually a minority of 
mankind will escape from the grasp of this evil, while the 
other and larger portion of the race will be held forever 
under its control. Were this the finality of truth, it 
would annihilate hope for the majority of mankind, and 
brand as a mockery what men have come to regard as 
divine revelation. In contrast to this view, the inspired 
prophecies of the Scriptures point unmistakably to a 
time when the devil and his works shall be totally and 
eternally destroyed; and the Biblical evidence of evil's 
self -destructive nature, when confronted with the demon- 
stration of God's omnipotence, reassures us that this 
doom will be literally fulfilled. 



THE WOMAN AND THE SERPENT 17 

In the metaphor of the garden the material conception 
of life, represented by Adam and Eve, virtually con- 
demned itself to toil and suffering and mortality; but the 
woman's discovery, that this sense of life was not of God, 
and that its only sponsor w^as a lying serpent, an embodi- 
ment in symbolism of the supposition that the nature and 
reign of Spirit is finite, was the starting-point at which 
humanity began its long and painful pilgrimage to the 
Heavenly City, so wonderfully described at the close of 
the Hebrew Scriptures. The history of this pilgrimage 
out of a sense of evil is the history of the awakening 
spiritual thought of humanity, first seen and articulated 
in Israel, and later in Christianity. Hence the unfailing 
interest possessed by the subject of Israel, and the vital 
import of the yet unfulfilled, or partially unfulfilled, 
prophecies relating to her restoration in the latter days. 

Commencing with the expulsion from Eden, the hu- 
man record, on its material side, is mainly but a succes- 
sion or procession of so many Adams and Eves, or the 
continuous repetition of the temptation and shame of the 
garden, with the continuous but futile effort of mortals 
to hide their errors from God. But there went out at 
the head of that procession, and ever accompanying it, 
the angelic assurance that the seed of the woman w-ould 
finally reverse the lie of evil concerning man, and swing 
open the gates of paradise. This was the mission openly 
committed to woman at the very beginning of human 
history, and this because she had glimpsed enough of the 
truth of creation to detect evil's disguise, and to call forth 
that great prophecy W'hich runs throughout the inspired 
record, a prophecy which imparted a glory to true 
womanhood that was never fully obscured, and w^hich in 
this age is shining with the splendor of dawning achieve- 
ment. 

It is quite freely admitted that Adam and Eve seri- 
ously erred in yielding to the sophistry of the serpent, 
which plainly means that they should have refused 
to accept the allegation that there was anything be- 
sides good to be known. No church in Christendom 



1 8 FOOTSTEPS OF ISRAEL 

could afford to teach otherwise. Yet this position once 
taken estabhshes it as the duty of mortals today to reject 
the same allegation. It is plain that the seductive sug- 
gestion of evil, from that day to this, neither originates 
with God nor involves anything which is included in the 
divine consciousness, other^vise evil would be necessarily 
inseparable from good. It is logically inconceivable that 
God should warn the inhabitants of Eden against know- 
ing what was true, but rather against being deceived into 
believing what was not true. It would be grossly irrever- 
ent, on the face of it, to assume that God Himself en- 
tertained a knowledge of that which the truth of His 
infinitude forbade man to know ; or that infinite wisdom 
and intelligence believed what Adam and Eve were pun- 
ished for believing. This is implied in the question, " Who 
told thee that thou wast naked ? " In her confession Eve 
absolved God of any participation in her temptation, and 
explained her misconduct as due to the beguilement of 
the serpent. That this view is not more generally ac- 
cepted simply proves how tenaciously the spell of the 
serpent has held the human mind, until its false testimony 
has come to be accredited as truth. 

One thing, however, is certain: that if divine power 
and wisdom admitted evil to the garden, the tempter's 
arguments were valid, and it would not have been sinful 
on the part of Adam and Eve to become acquainted with 
it; but the language of the story, in voicing God's con- 
demnation of the whole transaction, leaves but one pos- 
sible interpretation, namely, that evil had neither the 
Divine sanction nor permission. All this, of course, can 
have but one logical meaning and application: that the 
knowledge of evil, as put forward and defended so per- 
sistently by the serpent, and by all false teachers since, 
is but the knowledge of a lie, or the knowing of things 
that are not. When this is understood, when evil is uni- 
versally regarded as but the contradiction of good, and 
mortals no longer believe and obey it, the kingdom of 
God will, of a surety, be nigh at hand. 

If this story were being related by a modern writer 



THE WOMAN AND THE SERPENT 19 

it would probably be said that Adam and Eve were 
hypnotized by the serpent, and in that condition of ab- 
normal belief, as everyone knows, they would see what 
was suggested to them as the normal reality. Although 
the woman perceived something of this, she was unable 
to break the spell; but a beginning had been made, and 
the time was to come when woman's clearer spiritual 
vision would fully expose the hypnotic nature of evil, 
and point the way to mortals' disillusionment. 

In direct accord with this view is the statement of St. 
John the Revelator : " And the great dragon was cast out, 
that old serpent, called the devil, and Satan, which de- 
ceiveth the whole world." Here in a single passage we 
have four terms used as synonyms of evil as the deceiver 
or hypnotizer of mankind. Prior to this, Jesus had des- 
ignated this evil or devil as " a liar, and the father of it," 
and as having "no truth in him," so that one may safely 
conclude from his analysis that that which in the begin- 
ning deceived the thoughts of mortals, and outlined that 
deception in the human experience of sin and death, had 
neither part nor place in God's universe, but was an en- 
tirely abnormal and mistaken sense of things. And an 
utter mistake it has surely proved itself to be throughout 
human history, and a mistake it is proving itself to be 
today. The nature of a lie is ever the same, in that it is 
always untrue, and the work of a lie has always been to 
deceive those who believe it. "And the woman said. 
The serpent beguiled me " ; and it was this same evil sug- 
gestion that tempted Jesus in the wilderness, that St. 
John speaks of in the Apocalypse as persecuting the 
woman and her seed, and that persecutes the woman and 
her seed in the present hour. 

The enmity of the serpent against the woman, specifi- 
cally mentioned in the first and last books of the Bible, 
does not imply any radical discrimination between mor- 
tals as men and women, but illustrates the antagonism of 
the carnal mind towards spirituality. There is an in- 
herent and irreconcilable conflict, as the apostle intimates, 
between the flesh and Spirit, or between the sensual and 



20 FOOTSTEPS OF ISRAEL 

spiritual elements in human consciousness ; in other words, 
between the truth and the error of human experience. 

The Eden allegory teaches the antithetical and contra- 
dictory natures of good and evil, and the folly of at- 
tempting to believe both of them. On the side of the 
serpent are the debasing influences which impel the race 
towards moral and physical corruption, while the woman, 
on the other hand, prefigures the coming of the Christ. 
She stands as the type of spiritual overcoming, the sub- 
jugation and elimination of the animal instincts of mor- 
tals, and this type is preserved throughout subsequent 
Scripture. On her side is found every uplifting and re- 
generating influence which touches the human conscious- 
ness. It is through this spiritual ascendancy only that 
humanity can find deliverance from the subtleties of the 
serpent, and reach the actual consciousness that man is 
the son of God. 

Those who are inclined, for reasons of their own, to 
belittle the sphere of woman, or to discriminate against 
her capacities, should remember that the highest endow- 
ments are not measured by intellectual qualities or worldly 
attainments. The chief factor in appraising the value 
of either men or women is not the dust of the ground, 
nor anything that springs therefrom, but their possession 
of genuine spirituality. Human standards are too im- 
perfect and unstable to replace the judgment of divine 
truth and equity, in which goodness takes precedence 
over cleverness, and where virtue outlasts and outweighs 
all that the human senses can bestow. The cause of 
woman has never been popular because the great mass 
of mankind have followed the serpent's lead, and opposed 
everything of a really spiritualizing nature ; but the time 
is rapidly approaching when woman's part in the world's 
awakening will be fully recognized. Then will come the 
woman's hour, when it will be seen that it was her 
spiritual insight which pierced evil's boastful assumption 
of authority, and the age-prolonged subtleties and de- 
lusions of the carnal mind will finally be exposed. 

In a word, the seed of the woman, In its general 



THE WOMAN AND THE SERPENT 21 

application to humanity, may be defined as spiritual- 
mindedness, in opposition to the carnal-mindedness rep- 
resented by the serpent, an analysis which places every 
mortal on one side or the other. They should not fear 
to fight under the woman's banner who would escape 
from the oppressions of materialism. Because her seed 
is spiritual its increase is inevitable; and, however slow 
its growth, it spells the certain doom of the groveling 
serpent. The footsteps of Israel must be found in the 
spiritual line indicated by the woman, for there can be 
no heavenly vision in the service of material sense, or 
by whatever other name the serpent may be disguised. 

Although the woman referred to in this first prophecy 
is not identical with the human species, it is generally 
admitted that even the human sense of woman represents 
a more ethereal type of consciousness than the human 
sense of man, and that, all things considered, she is more 
spiritually perceptive and receptive. However this may 
be, the higher spiritual quality of thought, first expressed 
by woman, has been the medium by which every message 
from God has reached mankind; and the outgrowth 
or development of that gleam of divine light, in the 
early morning hours of that first day of human awaken- 
ing, must eventually lead to that seventh and better day, 
wherein the truth of being shall be fully understood, and 
the serpent, the spirit of evil, known under many aliases, 
be "cast into the lake of fire," the consuming truth of 
God's infinitude. 

Woman's place in prophecy, and in Its historic ful- 
filment, is something which must be seen and understood 
before one can read prophecy and history aright Proph- 
ecy began with woman, and until " the woman " accom- 
plishes her divinely appointed mission, prophecy will not 
be wholly fulfilled. When the world shall come to per- 
ceive and acknowledge these things, the day of Israel's 
restoration will be at hand, her Identity and destiny will 
be revealed, and the "throne of David," the reign of the 
Christ, be established among all nations. 



CHAPTER III 
The Early Morning of History 

The kingdom of heaven is like unto leaven, which a 
woman took, and hid in three measures of meal, till the 
whole was leavened. — Matt. 13:33. 

WITH the expulsion of " the man " from Eden, the 
curtain falls upon the first act of this allegorical 
story. The use of this term without naming 
Adam and Eve, who, it has been supposed, were the only 
inhabitants of the garden, is consistent with the meta- 
phorical nature of the whole narrative, and evidently 
signifies type or kind instead of particular individuals. 
It is expressly stated that the man was cast out because 
of his knowledge of evil, which shows unmistakably that 
such knowledge is impossible to God, and necessarily ex- 
cludes its possessor from the deific presence. This kind 
of man was clearly not the ideal of ihe son of God, and 
could not, therefore, be acknowledged by the Father. 
The sequel of the story would imply that the man whom 
it featured was a sham and an impostor. 

The woman's recognition that evil, masked in the 
story as a serpent, was a beguiler or enchanter, was 
naturally followed by the self -exposure of sin's inanity 
and the realization that no ungodly mode of thought 
or its embodiment had any possible place in para- 
dise. It was plainly the uncovering of the evil nature of 
this kind of man which banished it from the garden, 
and doomed it to self -punishment and death, evidently 
implying that good and evil, Spirit and flesh, are the true 
and the false, which have nothing in common and cannot 
dwell together. 

The next great act staged in the drama of mortal 
man, an act which followed the events of the garden in 
logical sequence, is presented in the story of the Deluge. 



THE EARLY MORNING OF HISTORY 23 

To what extent its description is historically accurate 
may not be determined, but its general correctness would 
seem to be corroborated by the traditions of other races. 
To the conscience of the early Hebrews it was accepted 
unquestioningly as the divine punishment for human 
wickedness, but the utter futility of attempting to purify 
the earth by drowning its inhabitants was so impressed 
upon Noah, that the assurance that this experience would 
not be repeated was later recorded as a covenant from 
God. The clearer vision of the prophets saw that the 
evil in human thought would have to be burned out with 
the fire of Truth. 

In this story, the Creator is represented as thoroughly 
disappointed and displeased with His own work. The 
man of the earth had turned out so badly as to be unfit 
to live, and so we read that the great flood came and de- 
stroyed "all in whose nostrils was the breath of life,'' 
with the exception of the family of Noah. The whole 
story, in its metaphysical aspect, bespeaks God's utter 
repudiation of materialism, for it undoubtedly teaches 
that the man formed "of the dust of the ground " is not 
the man in whom He delights. Beyond all question, the 
material concept of being had utterly failed to show 
forth the glory of God, and this failure revealed its ab- 
solute unlikeness to Deity. Speaking to this type of man, 
which was cast out of Eden, Jesus said, " Ye are of your 
father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do," 
a pronouncement which should prove conclusively that 
God was not its author. 

The outstanding feature of the story of the Flood is 
not that the world was deluged because of its wickedness, 
but that one man was found good enough to preserve 
himself and his family from the general destruction. 
The incident of the ark is the first recorded instance of 
the protective power of a knowledge of God in the pres- 
ence of physical danger. We learn from the narrative 
that Noah's preservation was due to his righteousness, 
or right-mindedness, and not that God singled him out 
for the purpose of prolonging the human race. This 



24 FOOTSTEPS OF ISRAEL 

fact is far-reaching in its significance and applica- 
tion, and its evidence will be seen to increase as we 
trace the journey of the human consciousness towards 
its perception of the Christ. It should be well understood 
that the salvation of Noah and his family was not the work 
of chance, or a piece of mere good fortune, but was due to 
the operation of a law which transcends material condi- 
tions, and which was brought to bear upon the present need 
through Noah's nearness to God in his own conscious- 
ness. Had there been others of the same class, they would 
undoubtedly have been included in the same salvation. 

We have heard from childhood the story of Enoch's 
exemption from death, and of Noah's deliverance from 
the Flood, but we have been wrongly taught to read 
into the sacred records the inference that these were 
special favors from God, which should not be expected 
under similar circumstances by other human beings. 
This inference is the thinly veiled philosophy of the 
carnal mind, which ever seeks to deprive man of his 
divine rights. It was plainly Enoch's close acquaintance 
with the divine life of man, which lifted him above the 
reach of mortality, and not that God had more respect 
for him than for others who might reach the same de- 
gree of spiritual consciousness. 

The Bible came into being that the way to " overcome 
the wicked one" might be revealed to men. If the 
possibility of escape from moral and physical evils, 
through an apprehension of divine power, did not exist, 
the Scriptures would, in consequence, have no practical 
value for oppressed humanity. Confined by its own 
theories to matter, human sense would be without any 
appreciable evidence of the existence of Spirit, or of the 
applicability of spiritual law to human need, except as 
material evils were overcome by supermaterial means. 
When it is remembered that the serpent is but a figure in 
metaphor to represent the deceptive nature of evil knowl- 
edge, it can be seen that as men begin to emerge from 
the delusions of that false knowledge, and to know that 
I God is the only power or law in the universe, they would 



THE EARLY MORNING OF HISTORY 25 

naturally begin to have dominion over the traditional 
fears engendered by a physical sense of being. From 
this standpoint one may readily understand the incidents 
recorded in the Scriptures which have seemed miraculous 
to the human mind. 

The recurrence of these signs or proofs of divine 
power over so-called earthly forces, which we find 
throughout the history of Israel, would indicate that they 
are an inseparable characteristic of a genuine knowledge 
of God. As human consciousness becomes spiritually illu- 
mined, the darkness of materialism must, to that ex- 
tent, lose its apparent substance and power, and cease to 
obscure a realization of God's omnipotence. The human 
sense, groping among the shadows of materiality, has 
been struggling towards what St. Paul called " the light 
of the knowledge of the glory of God," and it is this 
human struggle to find the truth about God which is re- 
corded throughout the sacred writings of the Hebrews. 

The conflict between the flesh and Spirit, between the 
seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent, fore- 
shadowed in the Edenic prophecy, is what human history 
in reality consists of, for all true civilization implies 
some degree of evil grappled with and overcome. A 
nation or a people which possessed no moral fiber, whose 
ideals were not founded upon righteousness, or which 
felt no quickening desire to be a blessing in the earth, 
would have no history worth recording, or any memo- 
ries fit to survive. We may confidently look forward 
to the time when whatever had its rise in evil will be ex- 
punged from human records, and good will be recognized 
as the only rightful sphere of man's consciousness and 
activity. 

Conflict, however, naturally involves more than one, 
hence the belief in a plurality of minds provides the 
only possible basis for strife and division. Without a 
belief in the opposite of divinity, there could be no con- 
flict of interests, and no evil to strive with; but the ac- 
ceptance of both good and evil as power and intelligence 
has ever involved humanity in perpetual discord. A 



26 FOOTSTEPS OF ISRAEL 

mutual hostility necessarily exists between the right and 
the wrong of things, whether in individual mentalities 
or in the ideals of nations, and peace cannot be ex- 
perienced between these opposite states. This enmity 
must continue until human consciousness shall be so 
illumined with the consciousness of the infinitude of good 
that evil will disappear as the moral darkness that it is. 

After the Flood we find the human race branching out 
into three streams, flowing from the sons of Noah, and 
representing types or gradations of human thought. In 
Noah's prophetic declaration regarding his sons, the 
chief blessing and the chief place are bestowed upon 
Shem. The benediction, "Blessed be the Lord God of 
Shem," was not repeated of the other two sons, neither 
was the promise that God would dwell in their tents. 
This passage evidently implies that Shem possessed the 
highest concept of Deity, and that, in all probability, his 
descendants would maintain the same distinction. It is 
not to be assumed, however, that Shem was chosen be- 
fore his brothers to be the progenitor of Israel for any 
other reason than that he possessed above them the qual- 
ity of thought through which God could best become 
known to men. 

It will be observed that the ancestry of Israel did 
not include all the sons of Shem, for but one of them 
was named to carry on the elect line, and this process of 
selection went on from, generation to generation, taking 
but one from each family, until we come to the twelve 
sons of Jacob. The "tents of Shem," therefore, cannot 
be interpreted as meaning all of his family descendants, 
but evidently referred to that chosen or selected race 
which afterwards came to be known as the people of God. 
This selective process was not always confined to the 
first-born son, so that a higher influence than family con- 
siderations was plainly at work in forming what the 
apostle called, " a chosen generation." 

We gather from the records that the interval after 
the passing of Noah presented little evidence of any 
general improvement. As it was with mankind before 



THE EARLY MORNING OF HISTORY 27 

the Flood, so it was after the Flood. We look in vain 
for any sign of moral betterment on account of that 
experience, its impression being soon forgotten or erased. 
The second trial of the man of dust proved as discredit- 
able and disappointing as the first. In the midst of this 
spiritual stagnation, about ten generations after Noah, 
we read that Abram heard the voice of the Lord, saying: 

" Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, 
and from thy father's house, unto a land that I will 
shew thee : 

And I will make of thee a great nation, and I will 
bless thee, and make thy name great ; and thou shalt be a 
blessing : 

And I will bless them that bless thee, and cui-se him 
that curseth thee : and in thee shall all families of the 
earth be blessed." 

Abram obeyed without questioning. He had appar- 
ently reached out for and had found a higher mental and 
spiritual plane of consciousness than others of his people, 
else he would not have heard and understood the divine 
message. In the words of the writer of the book of He- 
brews, he went out to look " for a city," that is, a con- 
sciousness of life, "whose builder and maker is God." 
His maturing conception of the real nature of God 
pointed to the wisdom of seeking another home and 
country where he might find the freedom to express his 
better sense of Deity. His recognition of the necessity 
for this complete separation impressed him as the divine 
call, " and he went out, not knowing whither he went." 

What it really meant was, that the glimmering dawn 
of Israel was beginning to break. " The Spirit of God " 
was moving " upon the face of the waters," the hetero- 
geneous human mass, and was preparing the formation 
of a nation whose recognition of the one infinite and 
only God was to be its distinguishing feature. It was 
necessary, in the very nature of things, that a racial 
distinction would sometime arise between those who had 
some definite knowledge of God, and the residue of man- 
kind. Ever since the enmity between good and evil had 
been uncovered to human consciousness, it was logically 



28 FOOTSTEPS OF ISRAEL 

inevitable that the mental qualities nearest to the right 
conception of God, as they became more defined and 
coherent, would sooner or later find their family and 
national expression. 

It was no doubt the unconscious stirring of these 
things that impelled Abram to leave the idolatry of his 
father's house, and that took form in his thought as a 
covenant or assurance from God. He beheld himself — 
not in the sense of personality, but as the representative 
of the true idea of God — becoming the founder, not 
only of a great nation, but of a great spiritual movement 
that, in the fulness of time, would cover the earth with 
its blessing, and gather all mankind into its fold. This 
great destiny, which was unfolded to Abram as the 
legacy of his race, cannot be rightly viewed as an ar- 
bitrary predestination by a personal Deity, but as the 
obligation naturally resting upon the most spiritually en- 
lightened people. It was Abram's preeminent fitness that 
alone selected him for this work, as it has been with every 
great leader and reformer. 

About twenty-five years later, when Abram was 
ninety-nine years old and there seemed little prospect of 
its fulfilment, the heavenly covenant was reaffirmed to 
him, with the assurance that the son who was to carry 
on his line would be born of Sarai. But the carnal mind 
argued that this could not be, because his wife had passed 
the time of motherhood allotted by so-called physical 
law. The enmity of the serpent arrayed the plea of 
matter against the continuation of her seed, but, al- 
though human faith staggered at the material argument, 
it was proved to be without power or authority. The 
law of Spirit prevailed, and in the process, the natures 
of Abram and Sarai were so deeply touched by a higher 
sense of life than matter, that they were henceforth to 
be known by new names. 

It was obviously in accord with the necessity for 
spiritual progress that the faith of Abraham and his wife 
should triumph over the so-called laws of the flesh, for 
only as they overcame evil could their experience bless 



THE EARLY MORNING OF HISTORY 29 

" all the families of the earth.'* Abraham had long since 
left his father's house, with its worship of materiality, 
and was here struggling with the ungodly claim that 
man is a creature of the dust, dependent for his life upon 
material conditions, instead of upon God. Were these 
material conditions to overrule the divine promise and 
prevent its fulfilment? It could not be. Abraham's 
higher thought of God, which had inspired him to seek 
*' a better country," and which had not failed him during 
the intervening years, emerged triumphant. The son of 
promise was born. 

And thus at the close of the first long lap of the human 
journey, it was demonstrated that a diviner law than 
physical sense governs the creation of man, and this ex- 
perience lifted human thought to a distinctly higher plane 
of preparation for its final freedom from evil, the goal 
towards which all right human endeavor is directed. 



CHAPTER IV 
The Rise of Israel 

But thou, Israel, art My servant, Jacob whom I have 
chosen, the seed of Abraham My friend. — Isa. 41 : 8. 

And I will make thee exceeding fruitful, and I will 
make nations of thee, and kings shall come out of thee. 

And I will establish My covenant between Me and thee 
and thy seed after thee in their generations for an ever- 
lasting covenant, to be a God unto thee, and to thy seed 
after thee. — Gen. 17:6, 7. 

Therefore sprang there even of one, and him as good 
as dead, so many as the stars of the sky in multitude, and 
as the sand which is by the sea shore innumerable. — 
Heb. II : 12. 

ABRAHAM is our father," argued the Jews with 
/A Jesus in their attempted self -justification, but the 
-^ -^ Master pointed out with incisive directness that to 
be Abraham's descendants meant something more than 
racial affinity. " If ye were Abraham's children," he said, 
*'ye would do the works of Abraham." And so while 
we follow with interest the course of Israel in the flesh 
among the races of the earth, we must not forget that 
the promises primarily belong to the Israel of Spirit. 

Abraham is a notably outstanding figure in the history 
of human development, not because of personal prestige, 
but because of his spiritual accomplishments. He had 
the remarkable distinction of being called " the friend 
of God." While his contemporaries were absorbed with 
the worship of idols, he was making the close acquaint- 
ance of the invisible Principle or cause of being which 
mortals name Deity, not through the medium of any physi- 
cal sense, but through mental obedience to his highest un- 
derstanding of good. Abraham's fidelity to the demands 
of God, so far as he apprehended them, brought him 
eventually to the point where he must choose between 
the human and the divine idea of fatherhood. Did he 
as a mortal glory over Isaac as his own son? — then he 
must surrender this human claim, this concept of man's 



THE RISE OF ISRAEL 31 

earthly origin, that Spirit might be to him the only 
Father, and His image and likeness the only Son. 

Whether this may or may not have come to him, in 
the crude fashion of his times, as a call for the literal 
sacrifice of his son's life, is of minor importance. The 
record indicates that he was prepared to go to even that 
extremity if he felt that God required it, but that would 
have been the interpretation of the carnal mind, and its 
logical ultimate would have required Abraham to offer 
up his own life also. What progress was impelling him 
to learn was that Isaac, as the divinely provided means 
for continuing the chosen seed, belonged not to him but 
to God. It was a rebuke to the material sense of father- 
hood which later found its perfect antitype in the spir- 
itual conception of Jesus. 

Reviewing this incident, it would seem that Abraham 
was here awakening to the recognition that man has no 
life other than God, and, consequently, that there was 
no" life in Isaac's body which God required him to de- 
stroy.. This naturally led him to see that what God did 
require him, as well as other mortals, to sacrifice was 
the sense of life as material, a sense of life which God 
neither creates nor destroys. The patriarch's enlarged 
perception of the spiritual nature of man which came to 
him in this experience, and his unreserved response to the 
demand to lay his earthly treasure upon the altar, made 
him the virtual starting-point of the line of the Messiah, 
and destined Israel to be the bearer of spiritual light to 
humanity. 

The process of selection, referred to in the preceding 
chapter, is again seen in the declaration to Abraham, " In 
Isaac shall thy seed be called," or named. The sons of 
Abraham by his other wives were thus not classed with 
the " seed," which would indicate that, in its truer mean- 
ing, this word was intended to apply only to the offspring 
or outgrowth of his spiritual sense of being. In his 
epistle to the Galatians St. Paul makes this distinction 
clear when he distinguishes between the son of Hagar 
and the son of Sarah, as between one born after the 



32 FOOTSTEPS OF ISRAEL 

flesh and one born after the Spirit. In other words, he 
impHes in his metaphysical analysis that the lesson of 
Isaac's birth, as the one designated beforehand to carry 
on the line of Israel, is the distinction which it makes 
between the spiritual and material sense of being. 

" For it is written that Abraham had two sons, the one 
by a bondmaid, the other by a f reewoman. But he who 
was of the bondwoman was born after the flesh; but he 
of the freewoman was of promise." The apostle then 
goes on to explain the allegorical meaning of this story, 
as indicating the bondage of material sense on one hand, 
and the freedom of spiritual sense on the other. " But 
as then he that was born after the flesh persecuted him 
that was born after the Spirit, even so it is now." In this 
verse Paul illustrates the enmity of materialism towards 
the seed of the woman, and confirms the conclusion, if 
it needs confirmation, that the seed of the woman is 
Israel. 

" Now we, brethren, as Isaac was, are the children of 
promise. ... So then, brethren, we are not children of 
the bondwoman, but of the free." Hence the natural 
conclusion that the people who should be named after 
the name of Isaac would be the children of freedom, the 
lovers and defenders of liberty, but a people, it must be 
remembered, whose freedom would be achieved and 
maintained by reason of spiritual enlightenment rather 
than by material force. By this freedom is meant the 
'liberty of the sons of God," — than which there is 
rightly no other, — first rather dimly seen in the acknowl- 
edgment of individual rights, then in liberty of conscience, 
and finally, as the ideal of Christianity is fully lifted up 
in human consciousness, in freedom from the domination 
of the carnal mind. 

"In thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be 
blessed," said the angel of the Lord to Abraham for the 
second time, " because thou hast obeyed My voice.'' In 
this last clause lay the only secret of Abraham's great- 
ness, and of Israel's prosperity and Influence as a nation ; 
while the withholding of this obedience was, on the other 



THE RISE OF ISRAEL 33 

hand, the source of Israel's failures and eventual down- 
fall. On this basis there was and is absolutely no respect 
of persons. The view frequently adopted by writers on 
these topics, that God arbitrarily selected one nation 
above all others to be His own particular people, irre- 
spective of their spiritual qualifications, is manifestly 
incompatible with the Divine nature, and would in effect 
place God upon the plane of human caprice. 

As a matter of fact, the choice in this case rested en- 
tirely with the Israelites. They were rightly called 
God's chosen people only in the sense that they alone 
out of the nations recognized and acknowledged Deity as 
One and supreme. This of itself, in an age of idolatry, 
would constitute them a "peculiar people." It is true 
that the primitive Hebrews, in their simple and almost 
superstitious way, regarded themselves as especially set 
apart by Jehovah from the rest of humanity, and re- 
corded this impression in their sacred writings, but this 
does not affect the perfectly logical position that the dis- 
tinction between the Israelites and their neighbors was 
one of consciousness and not of person. Their only 
advantage or superiority consisted of their better knowl- 
edge of God. It was not, therefore, because the seed of 
Abraham, according to the flesh, were literally to mul- 
tiply into many nations, or because they were to possess 
the gates of their enemies, that the world was to be 
blessed, but because of their obedience to God. This ap- 
plies itself equally to the Israelites of today. It should 
be recognized that obedience to good, in all times and 
circumstances, is the unexceptional condition of blessing, 
and the only real covenant of God with man. " Obey 
My voice, and I will be your God, and ye shall be My 
people" (Jer. y\2'^), declares God's lasting covenant, 
and when this obedience is lacking, the covenant is not 
in force. This point should not be permitted to get into 
the background, for without obedience to God the word 
Israel would have no spiritual application or value. 

We find that emphasis is again placed upon this point 
in the assurance to Isaac that in his seed also the nations 



34 FOOTSTEPS OF ISRAEL 

of the earth should be blessed, " because that Abraham 
obeyed My voice, and kept My charge, My commandments, 
My statutes, and My laws." We cannot assume that the 
nations of the earth, nor even Israel herself, would con- 
tinue to be blessed on account of Abraham's personal 
obedience, but that Abraham was preparing the way 
whereby his seed, the seed of the woman, should in due 
time make known the way of salvation to all men. As 
before intimated, the word " seed " did not always mean 
the natural descendants of Abraham, or of Isaac or Jacob 
as the case may be, but was also used to signify the type 
or quality of thought which especially characterized these 
founders of the line of Israel and made them what they 
were. The word is thus used in a distinctively spiritual 
sense, in which case it was sometimes applied in the 
singular, and without doubt referred to the one perfect 
Truth, or the Christ, which was being dimly foreshad- 
owed in the lives of the patriarchs. That Jesus clearly 
recognized this is indicated in his statement, "Abraham 
rejoiced to see my day." 

The prophecy in Genesis 22:17, "Thy seed shall pos- 
sess the gate of his enemies," is generally interpreted in 
a purely national or military sense, or as relating to the 
seed which was to become " as the sand which is upon 
the seashore," that is, to a large multitude of human 
beings ; whereas the use of the singular pronoun " his " 
in the phrase " the gate of his enemies," would indicate 
that the word was here intended to mean one and not 
many, even that one of whom Isaiah said, " the govern- 
ment shall be upon his shoulders." This is without 
question the one who, in the fulness of time, is to " pos- 
sess the gate of his enemies," which naturally means, as 
the word is evidently used in a figurative sense, that the 
spiritual seed of the woman is to dispossess the carnal 
mind of its strongholds. Whatever reference this and 
similar passages may have to the Israelites as a nation, 
— and they have without doubt a legitimate use in that 
connection — it is secondaiy and subordinate to their 
spiritual meaning and application, which invariably point 



THE RISE OF ISRAEL 35 

to the real and permanent issue in every case, as we shall 
discover all along- the way. 

Isaac was the connecting link in the great patriarchal 
triad of Israel, and is remembered more as Abraham's 
son of promise, pre-appointed to carry on the line of the 
seed of blessing, than for anything which particularly 
distinguished his own career. Contrary to his own pref- 
erence and design, he saw his elder and favorite son sup- 
planted in the succession by the younger, not recognizing- 
the divme influence that was plainly at work, an influence 
which has never yet been overruled by the shortsighted 
indifference or opposition of men. Before the birth of 
her twin sons, when she inquired of the Lord concerning- 
them, Rebekah was told that "the elder shall serve the 
younger. 

In the Book of Jubilees, a Jewish work of the second 
century b. c. dealing with the events recorded in Genesis 
and referred to by some of the early Christian authors,' 
we tind the following interesting passages: "Abraham 
saw the deeds of Esau, and he knew that his name and 
seed should be called for him in Jacob, and he called Re- 
bekah and commanded her concerning Jacob, for he saw 
that she too loved Jacob more than Esau. And he said 
to her: My daughter, watch my son Jacob, for he shall 
be m my stead upon the earth as a blessing among the 
sons of men . . and I know that the Lord has chosen 
him for himself ... add yet to do something good for 
nim and let thme eyes be over him as the beloved, for he 
shall be to me a blessing over the earth.' " (Page 60 ) ' 

Before we pass judgment upon the method by which 
Rebekah secured Isaac's blessing for her younger son, 
or the means by which Jacob had become possessed of the 
birthright, we should remember that this primitive people 
cannot justly be condemned by the moral code of a more 
enlightened age. Acts which would offend our moral 
sense were looked upon, under certain circumstances, as 
pardonable or even legitimate. We are too often con- 
ironted by a choice of evils in our own more progressive 
times to dwell too harshly upon the conduct of Jacob 



36 FOOTSTEPS OF ISRAEL 

and his mother. It is difficult at this date adequately to 
estimate the importance which the people of that day at- 
tached to the birthright and to the father's blessing, 
therefore we cannot fully realize the tremendous in- 
fluence which the possession of these would have upon the 
consciousness and the destiny of Jacob, especially when 
coupled with the conviction that he was the divine choice 
in the line of succession. 

Jacob, however, did not go entirely unpunished. His 
fear of Esau drove him from his father's house and 
country, and he served twenty years as an hireling with 
his uncle Laban. It is not likely that he understood, at 
the time, the real value or significance of either the birth- 
right or the blessing. He probably saw a vision of flocks 
and herds, and the exercise of power attached to the 
headship of his people, and the vision proved too much 
for his worldly thoughts. He had not then grown to see 
that the prosperity of Abraham and Isaac was the result 
of their fidelity to their understanding of spiritual good, 
and that the real substance and meaning of the family 
heritage was not material riches and power, but a knowl- 
edge of the one true God. 

Thus the carrying on of the line of Israel, as Jacob was 
afterwards to learn, meant vastly more than to be the 
heir of his father. It meant that he was to maintain the 
spiritual ideal of Deity which had separated Abraham and 
Isaac from the idolatry of their times, and through which 
salvation and blessing were to come to all the races of the 
earth. The first recorded instance of his awakening to 
these things occurred as he fled from the vengeance of 
Esau. It came as a vision of the night, when the affairs 
of the world were less obtrusive. He saw as it were a 
ladder that reached from earth to heaven, by which 
angels ascended and descended; "and, behold, the Lord 
stood above It, and said, I am the Lord God of Abraham 
thy father, and the God of Isaac : the land whereon thou 
liest, to thee will I give it, and to thy seed; . . . and in 
thee and in thy seed shall all the families of the earth be 
blessed." 



THE RISE OF ISRAEL 



Z7 



This vision made a wonderful impression upon the 
fugitive. He felt that he had come very close to the 
presence of God. We find throughout the Scriptural 
record that dreams or visions of the night v^ere fre- 
quently the channel by which men became aware of God's 
messages, and it is only the belief that physical means 
or modes are necessary to convey thought, that makes 
these things seem supernatural or mysterious. In reality 
it is no more mysterious to receive impressions from God, 
divine Mind, in what are called one's night dreams, if he 
is prepared to receive them, than to be thus inspired at 
other times, since all divine impartations are necessarily 
mental, whenever or however they may touch human 
consciousness. 

" Surely the Lord is in this place," said Jacob, " and I 
knew it not." He was beginning to learn, what we are 
all too apt to blindly ignore, that God is present with 
men whether human sense is ready to perceive it or not. 
The influence of this experience was so spiritually up- 
lifting that he set up his stone pillow for a memorial, as 
it afterwards proved, to all subsequent ages, and conse- 
crated it as a visible token of the unseen Divine presence. 
" This stone," Jacob said, " shall be God's house," and he 
there dedicated the first church. The idea behind this 
solitary memorial later expanded into the tabernacle, and 
the great temple of Solomon. It is behind every Chris- 
tian church and every Jewish synagogue where that idea 
is truly perceived, pointing men to the privilege and op- 
portunity of communion with their Creator. 

In view of all this it is not difficult to believe that this 
particular stone, so instinct with sacred memory, and so 
inseparable from an important stage of their spiritual 
history, would become an object of reverence to the Is- 
raelites. Some writers are of the opinion that it was this 
stone to which Jacob later referred, in his memorable 
prophetic blessing on the house of Joseph, as "the stone 
of Israel," or " Israel's guardian stone," as it is rendered 
in Ferrar Fenton's translation. It is not to be inferred 
that Jacob attached this high significance to a mere piece 



38 FOOTSTEPS OF ISRAEL 

of rock, or because it was his pillow the night of his 
heavenly vision at Bethel, but for what it represented to 
him and to his people. It not only commemorated his 
first real acquaintance with God, at the beginning of his 
long exile, but the assurance of the Divine presence and 
protection which he there received, an assurance which 
reached out beyond his personal career and has rested 
upon the people whom he afterwards came to represent. 
" Behold, I am with thee, and will keep thee in all places 
whither thou goest, and will bring thee again unto this 
land: for I will not leave thee, until I have done that 
which I have spoken to thee of." (Gen. 28:15.) 

It must be remembered that these were very primitive 
times, the earliest dawn of Israelitish history, when there 
was no written literature such as we have today, and 
oral tradition took the place of books. From what has 
come down to us, we know that in those days there were 
literally "sermons in stones," and this "pillow-pillar" of 
Jacob's undoubtedly helped to preserve a vital message 
for this nation that was yet only in its birth-throes. Even 
in our own more cultured and enlightened twentieth cen- 
tury, there is more store set by signs and symbols than 
most of us are willing to acknowledge. That this stone 
would be treasured and preserved by the Israelites may be 
accepted without question, and that it is still with them as 
a memorial of promise and prophecy is not beyond be- 
lief. Such things as these do not pass away "until all 
be fulfilled." 

In the " ladder set up on the earth," whose top reached 
to heaven, Jacob got a glimpse of the fact that mortals 
must lift their thoughts above the earthly or material 
sense of things if they would understand and worship 
God aright. This is evidently the true meaning of 
Bethel, the "house of God." His receptivity to the 
divine unfoldment was fitting Jacob to carry on the line 
of the covenant made with his fathers, and to complete 
that threefold declaration of Deity to Moses, " I am the 
God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of 
Jacob." To bring the true idea of God to human beings, 



THE RISE OF ISRAEL 39 

and thus to give them a consciousness of heaven while yet 
on earth, is the great mission committed to the house of 
God, the true Church, typified in that age by a sohtary 
stone set up at Luz, but a stone which was to become a 
token of God's everlasting care and protection over His 
people. 

The sequel to his vision at Bethel came to Jacob as he 
was about to meet his brother Esau. The call had come to 
return to his own country, but as he came near he found 
himself confronted by the same fear which had driven 
him forth. On the eve of this dreaded meeting, after 
having cared for his family, " Jacob was left alone ; and 
there wrestled a man with him until the breaking of the 
day"; and then follows a brief account of the trans- 
forming experience which set the divine seal upon the 
destiny of the line of Israel. This account is plainly 
metaphorical rather than literal. Jacob was not wrestling 
with another man like himself, for the record distinctly 
states that he was alone. The conflict described was ap- 
parently taking place in his own consciousness, rather 
than to his external senses. Jacob had reached a crisis 
in his mental life. He had come to the place where the 
evil which tormented him had to be squarely faced and 
the issue fought out. " There wrestled a man with him/' 
and what other man was this but his own better self, his 
angel, the Jacob which was not of the earth earthy, but 
which was the son of God. His selfish, sensual sense was 
struggling with the divinity of his real being, and the 
godlike in his consciousness "prevailed." 

Jacob's conquest over the "old man," the man who 
had wronged his brother and was afraid to meet the 
consequences, won for him the new name of Israel. 
This word literally means "prince of God," or as it is 
sometimes rendered, "son of God." The Scriptures 
teach that this "son of God" is the real man, or the 
" new man " referred to by the apostle, and the struggle 
in Jacob's thought, as it must be in the thought of every 
human being, was between this true idea, and the evil 
sense of man, as sensual and mortal. Jacob could flee 



40 FOOTSTEPS OF ISRAEL 

from the vengeance of his brother, but he could not es- 
cape from the evil which he had made part of his con- 
sciousness; and until he had striven with this evil and 
recognized its unlawful nature, he was not ready to carry 
on the line of the woman. The patriarch's experience 
and its result establish the conquest over sin as one of 
the chief foundation stones of Israel. If this part of the 
foundation is removed, the human superstructure, how- 
ever imposing, will not stand. 

"And Jacob called the name of the place Peniel: for 
I have seen God face to face " ; which calls to mind that 
profound saying of Jesus, the Son of God, "He that 
hath seen me hath seen the Father." Jacob had caught 
a glimpse of God as made manifest in His son, that is, 
he had caught a glimpse of the truth that man is created 
in God's image, and this vision gave a meaning to Israel 
that transcends the human distinction of nationality or 
race, and that will remain until all mankind catch the 
same vision, and prevail in the same conflict. 

The seed of the woman was surely treading upon the 
serpent's head. The day of Israel, the human recogni- 
tion of the reign of Spirit, had begun. 



CHAPTER V 
The Meaning of *' Israel" 

And Jacob called the name of the place Peniel: for I 
have seen God face to face. — Gen. 32 : 30. 

He that overcometh shall inherit all things ; and I will 
be his God, and he shall be My son. — Rev. 21:7. 

< AND he said, Thy name shall be called no more 
/■\ Jacob, but Israel : for as a prince hast thou power 
-^ J^ with God and with men, and hast prevailed." The 
name Israel, encountered here for the first time, was 
given to Jacob in recognition of his change of character. 
Originally bestowed to commemorate this patriarch's ap- 
prehension of man's spiritual nature, its meaning and 
influence in time extended beyond his person and gen- 
eration, beyond the nation which adopted it as its name, 
outlasting the long oblivion into which that nation dis- 
appeared, and is today one of the most pregnant words 
in the English language. 

It will be noticed throughout the subsequent narrative 
that Jacob is still largely spoken of by his former name, 
which would indicate that the word Israel was regarded 
chiefly as defining his spiritual status, and the spiritual 
status and destiny of the nation which flowed from him. 
Even at the present day the personality of this patriarch 
is identified by the name of Jacob rather than Israel, 
showing that the latter appellation has a larger and 
higher meaning than the name of a man or of a nation. 
The only proper basis upon which the Hebrew race could 
adopt the distinctive name of Israel would be that they 
accepted the burden of proof that the God with whom 
Abraham communed, and whom Jacob saw ** face to 
face " at Peniel, was the only God in all the earth. 

Although the meaning of Israel is, strictly speaking, 
confined to its spiritual significance, it necessarily has its 



42 FOOTSTEPS OF ISRAEL 

correlative application as designating* that chosen people 
in whose consciousness God's supremacy was acknowl- 
edged, and by whom all mankind were to be eventually 
evangelized. This word, therefore, while originally sig- 
nifying that which transcends the human personality, 
has come to have a dual application. The Israelites 
stood in the same relation to the spi^'itual truth behind the 
word Israel, that Christians do to the truths of Christi- 
anity; but Christians are not synonymous with Chris- 
tianity, neither were the Israelites synonymous with 
Israel. If we keep this distinction in mind, we can use 
the word Israel as designating the Hebrew nation, with- 
out divorcing the word from its spiritual significance. 

It may be well here to consider more fully the real 
meaning of Israel, not only because that meaning is so 
vitally important to the redemption of humanity, but be- 
cause the signs indicate that we are now in what the 
Scriptures call the " latter days," wherein we may rightly 
expect the beginning of that great event of prophecy 
known as the Restoration of Israel. But unless we know 
what Israel means, and the nature of what was involved 
in its loss, we shall not be prepared to recognize the 
fulfilment of the prophets' vision when it comes. 

As already noted, Israel was much more than a per- 
son. The disappearance of a person, however prominent 
or esteemed, would not affect the individual status of 
those who remained. By the same token Israel is also 
much more than a nation, since a nation is but the con- 
tinuous aggregation of persons united by a common type 
of thought. Thus the disappearance or reappearance of 
national Israel, although possessing great human interest, 
would not of itself be momentous to human destiny. We 
have seen that Jacob was awarded the title of Israel be- 
cause he had, in some measure above the ordinary, pre- 
vailed over the suggestions of the serpent, and the nation 
which came from him could rightly merit the same name 
only as it did the same thing. 

When it is said, however, that Israel Is more than a 
nation, it does not mean that the word does not involve 



THE MEANING OF "ISRAEL" 43 

a national use. The greater must necessarily include 
the less. The larger spiritual meaning of Israel must 
necessarily hold within it some application to a nation, 
for the simple reason that the Israelitish people were 
to have existence as a nation for the very purpose of giv- 
ing that meaning concrete expression and activity. The 
evident mistake is in limiting the word to its national 
application. The selection that went on from Adam to 
Jacob was clearly mental, and betokened the development 
of a people whose quality of thought would be particu- 
larly susceptible to spiritual influence. Unless this de- 
velopment of a '* peculiar people " was taking place, that 
is, unless there was actually in process in human con- 
sciousness a definite improvement over the man of 
dust, and a growing recognition of spiritual being, there 
could be no final salvation in prospect for the human 
race. 

While it is a mistake to lose sight of the spiritual 
identity of Israel in the doings or misdoings of the He- 
brews, it is, on the other hand, as great a mistake to as- 
sume that Israel has today no national representation, 
or that she will never again resume her leading place 
among the nations. The former position led to the error 
of thinking that the less includes the greater, while the 
latter position would obscure the greater by denying the 
less. The human sense of things will naturally continue 
in evidence until this sensual or material sense is out- 
grown, and a state of wholly spiritual consciousness is 
attained. 

The Hebrews were called Israelites for the sole reason 
that a knowledge of the true God was found among 
them; but this does not imply that every individual He- 
brew possessed that knowledge. The national conscious- 
ness of the Hebrews presented the least resistance to 
divine revelation, therefore God was revealed through 
that nation, beginning with Abraham and continuing at 
intervals to the present age. Thus Israel as a nation 
meant the national acknowledgment of one God, as dis- 
tinguished from the idolatry of Gentile nations, so that 



44 FOOTSTEPS OF ISRAEL 

in time "the God of Israel" came to be synonymous 
with the Supreme Being, the God who is "above all 
gods." The use of the word Israel related primarily to 
the spiritual side of the nation's life and character, and 
inseparable from this meaning is the prophetic statement 
that all the earth is to be blessed in Israel, that is, in the 
spiritual truth which was being revealed through it. 

It is true that many of the Israelites, and at times al- 
most the entire nation, were wicked and idolatrous, but 
that is equally true of the so-called Christian nations 
today, and only proves that without the spiritual inspira- 
tion which transfigures consciousness, words and names 
have little value. The spiritual element alone is the real 
heart of a nation, and the salt of the earth. This may be 
seen in the selective process which singled out Noah, 
Abraham, Jacob, Moses, etc., as special avenues or instru- 
ments of Divine truth, a process which has gone on more 
or less conspicuously down to our own time. It will be 
remembered that Elijah once believed himself to be the 
only loyal Israelite in the nation, but he was assured of 
the Lord that there were still seven thousand who had 
not bowed the knee to Baal. These were, beyond argu- 
ment, the only true representatives of Israel in the nation. 
And so it has always been, and is today. The restoration 
of spiritual Israel is what the world has looked and 
waited for, and is what the prophets foresaw as the re- 
appearing of the Messianic Truth, first presented to man- 
kind by Christ Jesus; and this final reappearing of the 
promised Deliverer was to be followed by the bringing 
to life, or the resurrecting from its oblivion, of Israel 
after the flesh, or in other words national Israel. There 
must always be the two witnesses. The letter and the 
Spirit must coincide in prophetic fulfilment, If the Scrip- 
tures are not to be broken, and It was plainly so seen In 
the visions of the prophets. It is Idle at this date to at- 
tempt their separation, for while men are gathered Into 
nations, there must always be the one that stands nearest 
to God, and that nation will necessarily be the one which 
understands Him best. 



THE MEANING OF "ISRAEL" 



45 



The conclusion of any rational human being, based 
upon experience and personal observation, as well as 
upon the testimony of history, must be that what sepa- 
rates him, together with the rest of humanity, from the 
realization of perfection and immortality, is the sense or 
consciousness which we call material. This sense of 
things includes all that is held to be mortal and unde- 
sirable. From it arise all the dread and the fear that 
terrorize humanity, from creeping infancy to stalwart 
manhood and weary age. All that is included in the 
word sin, its motives, means, or objects, its vicious ap- 
petites and passions ; all that is meant by the word suffer- 
ing, the miseries, torments, and desolation that oppress 
humanity; all that makes existence discordant, that em- 
bitters the human cup, that covers earth with a mantle of 
sorrow, all that is outside the kingdom of heaven, arise 
from and pertain to a physical or corporeal conception 
of life and consciousness. " For I know," said Paul, 
"that in me (that is, in my flesh,) dwelleth no good 
thing." 

It is quite apparent that the Deliverer of humanity 
must come from an opposite mental direction to that of 
its oppressor. No good thing, as the apostle frankly 
states, can come out of the carnal mind; hence mortals 
have no alternative but to look for their Saviour in the 
direction of the divine Mind, or what St. Paul called 
"the mind of Christ." That the "fruit," the outcome, 
of having this Mind is " love, joy, peace," establishes 
the fact that the kingdom of heaven must lie in that di- 
rection. Thus whatever actual progress the race has 
made, or that remains to be achieved, must necessarily 
be in the direction indicated by a more spiritual conscious- 
ness of being. 

Without an abiding perception of these things we shall 
miss the true meaning of Israel, as well as the lessons of 
the history of the nation which bore that name. The 
word, as originally defined, meant having power with 
God, or that enlightened spiritual sense through which 
His power became available to men. It means the recog- 



46 FOOTSTEPS OF ISRAEL 

nition that man is the son of God, and implies that exalted 
mental state by which men may become conscious of 
God's presence, and of His sovereignty in human affairs. 
The so-called physical man is not capable of this. 
Neither the human eye nor ear nor hand has ever become 
cognizant of the presence of Spirit or of man as His 
offspring. The Scriptures clearly imply that, while hu- 
man thought is at home in corporeal sense, it is " absent 
from the Lord " ; so that there is absolutely nothing in a 
corporeal or physical sense of being that can connect man 
with his Creator; and whatever is incapable of doing this 
must naturally express the nature of evil, of that which, 
to human belief, separates men from God. 

In his experience at Peniel Jacob struggled all through 
the night to lay hold of the spiritual nature of man, and 
his success ineffaceably stamped itself upon human con- 
sciousness. It was the birth of Israel. A birth, however, 
is not the appearance of a full-grown man; and that 
which came to light in the consciousness of Jacob, as he 
wrestled with his angel visitor, was but the infantile 
promise of the glory which was to come. This infant 
would take centuries and millenniums in place of years in 
reaching maturity. What was it, then, that broke in on 
Jacob's vision as the morning ended his long vigil ? What 
did he see face to face? Was it not a glimpse of the 
same Truth that blinded Saul with its glory on his way 
to persecute the Christians at Damascus, and which 
transformed his nature also? 

Stated in the simplest possible terms, " Israel " means 
the spiritual sense or understanding of being, which can 
alone reveal God and the perfect man. That which pre- 
vailed and had power with God was entirely separate and 
apart from Jacob's materiality. This is naturally very 
obvious, but it is important that we recognize its bearing 
upon the whole subject of Israel, and the whole subject 
of Scriptural interpretation and human redemption. 
That which wrestled and prevailed in that memorable ex- 
perience at Peniel, is what must wrestle and prevail in 
the consciousness of every human being, a fact which 



THE MEANING OF "ISRAEL" 47 

brings these distant occurrences very close to the present 
time, and invests the whole story of Israel with intense 
personal interest. If we have not already learned them, 
the lessons of the past will have to be repeated, for we 
must all take our place somewhere along the line of 
Israel's uncompleted journey. 

Since it is self-evident that the sensuous human mind 
can provide no salvation from its ills and evils, that is 
from itself, a time would necessarily have to come when 
men would begin to think less materially. If evil was 
ever to be overcome, as we know it must, human con- 
sciousness would have to reach the point where some 
glimmer of spiritual light could penetrate and illumine 
its material darkness. These points of spiritual illumi- 
nation mark the progress of Israel throughout the Bibli- 
cal records, and they still serve as beacons of promise in 
keeping aglow the hope of humanity. These were reve- 
lations of divinity, of the glory which is not of earth or 
sea or sky, the glory which Christ Jesus had with the 
Father ^before the world was.'" For those who have 
eyes to see, they light the way out of the flesh into the 
realm of Spirit. Without this divine unfolding, and the 
spiritual teachings which grew therefrom, the Scriptures 
would be as helpless to lead mortals out of their errors 
as would a treatise on astronomy. 

The spiritual movement known as Israel, which grew 
out of Jacob's illumination at Peniel, was a distinct and 
lasting challenge to the carnal mind. It stood first and 
last for the bruising of the serpent. Admitting, as in 
honesty w^e must, that what so deeply influenced the pa- 
triarch and his descendants was an impartation from the 
divine Spirit, we should be frankly ready to acknowledge 
that the word Israel, which Jacob accepted as confirming 
the nature of his experience, was w^holly spiritual in its 
import. The use of the word in designating the Hebrew 
race is a courtesy as well as a convenience of speech. Had 
the Hebrews as a people been wholly devoid of the 
spiritual characteristics indicated in the name of Israel, 
they would have been on the same level with other races, 



48 FOOTSTEPS OE ISRAEL 

so far as exerting any decisive influence in the shaping 
of human destiny. 

Naaman the Syrian, as before pointed out, touched 
the key to the whole situation, both Hterally and spirit- 
ually, when he said, " Now I know that there is no God 
in all the earth, but in Israel." He knew this for the very 
simple reason that he had been healed of his leprosy in 
proof thereof, for none of the gods of the Gentiles could 
do this thing. There naturally could not be more than 
one true God. A false god is a self-condemned lie, whether 
formulated in human doctrines, or objectified by man's 
device. Naaman's conclusion must hold true to the end 
of time, for there is and can be only the God who was 
revealed to the patriarchs and prophets of Israel as a 
doer of wondrous things, as a Saviour, Protector, De- 
liverer. That was the distinguishing mark of Israel 
when it was being established among the nations, and it 
must be her distinguishing mark when the time comes for 
that nation to be restored. 

The danger attending any great spiritual movement 
is the tendency to lose sight of its real inspiration and 
purpose in the multitude of its externals ; in other words, 
the danger of regarding persons and things as the means 
rather than the medium of its accomplishment. For this 
reason there is danger of giving too much attention to 
the purely national aspect of Israel's present and future 
status. " Righteousness," a great Israelite said, " ex- 
alteth a nation," and nothing else can, no matter what a 
nation's lineage may be. But righteousness is not be- 
gotten of the carnal mind, nor is it natural to the carnal 
sense, so that it is clearly evident that a nation can be 
exalted or blessed, or be a blessing, only as it forsakes 
its material concepts and motives for spiritual ideals, 
and approximates these ideals in its character and life. 

The word "Israel," like the word "Christian," has been 
subject to some misuse, in applying the name as if it beto^ 
kened the life, whether or not the nature accompanied it. 
"He is not a Jew which is one outwardly," said Paul, "but 
he IS a Jewwhich is one inwardly." Likewise a real Israelite 



THE MEANING OF "ISRAEL" 49 

is one who knows in himself that he is a son of God, and 
if this inward assurance is lacking, his national designation 
has no higher meaning to him than that of a Hottentot. 
We also rob the word Israelite of its proper signification 
if we use it as if it belonged only to a particular race, 
and could never have a broader application. It would 
be quite as logical to use the word Christian as belonging 
only to the Jews because its Founder was a Jew. Being 
universal in its nature, the word Israel belongs to the 
world, and in its new name will sometime be applicable 
to all humanity. 

The descendants of Abraham, through Isaac and Jacob, 
w^ere the first among mankind to acknowledge them- 
selves as Israelites, that is, as children of God. The na- 
tions about them, while no more mortal than themselves, 
were without a knowledge of the one Deity, and served 
idols, or " strange gods.'' The best, therefore, among 
the Israelites always marked the highest human advance 
towards the apprehension of being as spiritual, and this 
alone is w^hy Israel was named upon them as a nation. 
This national embodiment is what is sometimes called 
" literal Israel," in contradistinction to " spiritual Israel," 
or the application of the word in its purely spiritual 
meaning. 

At the same time, however, it should be remembered 
that, without literal Israel, that is, without some visible 
human medium or instrument, spiritual Israel would 
have lacked the opportunity to become humanly known, 
just as it would have been impossible for Christianity 
to have obtained recognition and establishment, without 
some personal representatives through whom its nature 
and value might be expressed. It required the personal 
Jesus to make the Christ known to human sense, and for 
a similar reason, it has required the great body of his 
personal followers to continue that w^ork. 

The truth about God and man has always been present, 
but until it was perceived by the Hebrew patriarchs it 
remained out of touch with human need. Thus it was 
through the personal experience of Abraham, Isaac, and 



50 FOOTSTEPS OF ISRAEL 

Jacob, that the Israel of Spirit, the revelation of the one- 
ness of God and the divine sonship of man, began to be 
humanly apprehended; and while human sense lasts, the 
Word will continue to be made flesh and to dwell among 
us — in other words, be humanly apprehended and ex- 
pressed. Until human thought is wholly regenerated, the 
letter and the Spirit must bear witness together; for 
without the letter, the literal or outward manifestation, 
the Spirit could not reach humanity; and without the 
Spirit, as the apostle writes, the letter would be dead. 

Consequently, when Israel as a nation relinquished her 
hold of spirituality, she lost the mainspring of her nation- 
hood, and became dead, to herself and to the world. But 
her history is not to end there. When the time of her 
oppressor runs its full course, when the Israelites return 
to the worship of the God of their fathers, their national 
existence is to be revived. The one could not take place 
without the other, any more than Jesus could have 
brought Lazarus from the dead without giving back to 
him his quickened body, in order that he might be known 
to his friends and resume his place among them. 

Therefore, while this book is mainly concerned with 
the spiritual side of Israel's restoration, it will not lose 
sight of the physical or national side, for Israel redivivus 
must have its body through which to act. We must, 
however, avoid the mistake of putting the first last and 
the last first. When the Israel of Spirit is brought to 
light, Israel after the flesh will also be revealed; but to 
restore the latter and not the former would profit man- 
kind nothing. When Shiloh comes, to him shall be " the 
gathering of the people," or the gathering of national 
Israel, but this gathering will not take place before. Is- 
rael the nation will bear its testimony at the right time, 
if the prophets saw their vision truly, but let us not 
forget that this national reappearance is secondary and 
dependent. Humanity is waiting to awaken to the pres- 
ence of spiritual Israel, its purpose and meaning, and 
when this is realized " all nations shall flow unto it." 



CHAPTER VI 
Joseph and Judah 

For Judah prevailed above his brethren, and of him 
came the chief ruler ; but the birthright was Joseph's. — 
I Chron. s : 2. 

Gilead is Mine, and Manasseh is Mine; Ephraim also 
is the strength of Mine head ; Judah is My lawgiver. — 
Ps. 60:7. 

Give ear, O Shepherd of Israel, Thou that leadest 
Joseph like a flock. — Ps. 80: i. 

THE process of Divine selection, referred to in 
previous chapters, by which one was taken and the 
other left, and in which the order of human pre- 
cedence was entirely ignored, is again seen in the choice 
of Joseph. 

In his dream of the stars Joseph perceived that, al- 
though the second youngest son, he was to be given the 
highest place in his father's family, that is, in Israel, and 
that in time his race was to become the dominant factor in 
the world's affairs. And why? Evidently because of the 
unchanging law of the fitness of things, and not because 
of personal preference. Joseph's subsequent history 
demonstrated that he of all his brethren best embodied 
the idea of Israel, and this of itself would naturally point 
to him as chief among his brethren, and to his tribe as 
the logical head of the nation. 

Joseph's star, to speak after the fashion of his dream, 
could only have been in the ascendancy, because he came 
next in the spiritual line of " the woman." The Scripture 
indicates that he was born in answer to Rachel's prayer. 
Material sense, in one of its many vagaries, had again 
attempted to prevent the continuance of Israel, inasmuch 
as Rachel, not Leah, was the wife of Jacob's choice, hav- 
ing been supplanted by Leah through her father's decep- 
tion. It is well to remember, in reading these Hebrew 



52 FOOTSTEPS OF ISRAEL 

narratives, that they deal primarily with conditions of 
thought, and not simply with material persons or passing 
events. " Things which are seen," said the writer of 
the book of Hebrews, " were not made of things which 
do appear." Neither is human destiny put together out 
of the driftwood of chance circumstances, but continually 
follows the upward movement of human thought. 

From what the Scriptures reveal of the divine plan, 
it can be seen that God has never been influenced by the 
opinions of men, nor has He paid the slightest respect 
to the claims of human personality. Because of the om- 
nipresence of God, we know there is a law of good spir- 
itually active in human affairs, a law of righteousness 
and goodness and truth. No one has ever ascended the 
hill of the Lord who had not clean hands and a pure 
heart. And so we shall find that the progress of Israel 
through human history has always been the progress of 
a higher sense of being than is found in the beliefs of 
materialism. Although these early pioneers of Chris- 
tianity were men of like passions as other mortals, they 
undoubtedly had some genuine perception of the absolute 
nature of God, and were as loyal to that perception as 
the conditions of the age permitted. Their work was 
to prepare the way of the Lord, not to force conclusions 
which neither they nor the state of human thought were 
ready to adopt. 

Betrayed by his own kindred, Joseph was taken into 
Egypt as a slave and sold to an officer of Pharaoh's court. 
The serpent sought to destroy him through the enmity of 
his brethren, after the manner of Cain, but failing in this 
it struck at him again, with more subtle and insidious 
intent, in the house of Potiphar, and he succeeded in re- 
taining his moral liberty only at the price of a prison 
cell. Every reader of the Bible remembers his dramatic 
transit from that cell to the position of second ruler in 
the kingdom. In the interpretation of the king's dream it 
was given to Joseph to foresee the impending famine, 
and the means of preserving the people from destruction. 
We are all familiar with the beautiful story of the dis- 



JOSEPH AND JUDAH 53 

closure of his identity to his brethren, who had sold him 
into Egypt many years before and who had now come 
to buy corn; also the joy of his old father at learning 
that his favorite son was still alive and in such great 
power. Thus we find Jacob and his family, the embry- 
onic nation of Israel, settling in Egypt under royal favor 
and taking root there. 

When Joseph believed that his father's days were 
drawing to a close, he brought his two sons, Manasseh 
and Ephraim, born of his Egyptian wife, to receive the 
parental blessing. The high value attached to this act 
in the patriarchal age may be seen in the anguish of Esau 
when he discovered that he had been deprived of the 
blessing which was due him as the first-born. It was 
believed that the father spoke with the authority of God, 
and that his declarations would surely come to pass. 
Jacob accordingly blessed Joseph and his two sons, and 
formally adopted the latter into his own family. " And 
let my name be named on them, and the name of my 
fathers Abraham and Isaac." And what was Jacob's 
name to be thus conferred upon these boys, and what 
was the name of his fathers, used here in the singular 
as applying to both of these patriarchs, but the name of 
Israel? Names were frequently used by the Hebrews to 
denote the character of the person, and especially so 
when it was afterwards changed, as in the case of Jacob 
to Israel. This word was also used to imply authority, 
as in the phrase, " in the name of the Lord." 

Jacob here used the word in both senses. Manasseh 
and Ephraim were to be endowed with the characteristics 
of the three great patriarchs, and were to bear their 
name, that is, continue in their race the authority and 
power over evil implied in the word Israel. They were 
jointly to take up the line of succession as inheritors of 
the promise made to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. In call- 
ing his name over them, Jacob was thinking of something 
greater than the personality of himself or of his fathers. 
He was evidently referring to their close acquaintance 
with Him who had called the universe into being, an 



54 FOOTSTEPS OF ISRAEL 

acquaintance so well founded and confirmed that to de- 
scribe Him as the " God of Israel " was sufficient assur- 
ance of correct designation. In here calling the name of 
Israel on the sons of Joseph, he was doing more than 
merely admitting them into his family, more than placing 
them upon an equal footing with his sons : he was making 
them the joint guardians and defenders of the covenant. 
Theirs it would be, in a special sense, to make the God of 
Israel known in all the earth. 

"The Angel which redeemed me from all evil, bless 
the lads." What had protected Jacob from evil? It 
was very evidently not a person, but what he believed and 
knew of God. In his dream at Bethel the Lord said to 
him, " Behold, I am with thee, and will keep thee in all 
places whither thou goest," and it was this realization 
of the presence of God which gave him the assurance of 
divine protection. According to the manner of his time, 
he called this transcendent consciousness of good an 
angel, that is, a messenger of God, which in reality it 
was. In this passage Jacob intimates that these boys 
were to be blessed by the same knowledge of God which 
had formed the basis of the covenant with himself and 
his fathers, and which was and is and ever will be the 
spiritual life of Israel. 

In placing his right hand upon the head of Ephraim 
the younger son, as a sign that he was to have the chief 
place in Joseph's family and in the nation, Jacob was 
guided by spiritual insight and not personal caprice. The 
transfer of the birthright from Reuben to Joseph, be- 
cause of the former's moral unfitness, need not be en- 
larged upon here, except to note the fact that moral and 
spiritual qualities, and not the order of birth, was the one 
consideration or influence in laying the foundation of 
the line of Israel. Jacob had seen enough of the Divine 
impartiality to know that the human law of primogeniture 
was entirely secondary and inconsequential in relation to 
His purposes. This ancient custom was a purely human 
institution, and carried with it no spiritual blessing or 
privilege above the rest of the family. There was, there- 



JOSEPH AND JUDAH 55 

fore, no added blessing due to Ephraim because he was 
chosen before his elder brother as successor to the birth- 
right, nor, for the same reason, was Manasseh deprived of 
any real good in being given second place. It is well to 
note here also that, although Ephraim was to have the 
headship of the nation, there was no intimation of any 
servitude on the one side or of domination on the other. 
The two were to remain united as the house of Joseph, 
and thus united, they were to fulfil the destiny of Israel 
among the nations. 

This is brought out more fully as we read further: 
" And he blessed them that day, saying, In thee shall Is- 
rael bless." In "thee," — in Ephraim and Manasseh as 
one, — " shall Israel bless," or give out blessing. If Jacob 
had intended to discriminate between the two in this 
spiritual blessing, he would not have thus spoken of them 
as one. All that is implied in the name Israel was to be 
their special charge, — not as two, but as one. Their real 
blessing was that they should be a blessing, and should 
bring all nations to a knowledge of the Lord. 

In view of the place they were to fill in the world, the 
equality of the blessing pronounced upon the sons of 
Joseph is highly significant, and its importance should 
not be passed over. Although Ephraim was to have the 
precedence, and it was to be the ten thousands of Eph- 
raim and the thousands of Manasseh, the blessing spiritu- 
ally was the same for each. As the standard-bearers of 
the covenant they were to be one, — one in aims, ideals, 
efforts, and success. "In thee [the house of Joseph] shall 
all Israel bless, saying, God make thee as Ephraim and as 
Manasseh," thus placing them upon a distinctly equal 
footing, save for priority. The mere birthright, for that 
matter, never did mean anything more than material in- 
heritance and responsibility. Manasseh possessed no spir- 
itual superiority over Ephraim on account of being the 
first-born, nor did the placing of Ephraim at the head of 
the family give him any spiritual advantage over his 
elder brother. It is well to remember that any impor- 
tance attaching to the birthright was purely human, and 



56 FOOTSTEPS OF ISRAEL 

had nothing to do with the spiritual line of Israel. We 
have already learned that God makes His selections ac- 
cording to worth, not according to birth. And so in the 
case of Ephraim and Manasseh, we can rightly think of 
them only as being unitedly the representative and ex- 
ecutive of Israel. It is true the enmity of the serpent, al- 
ways intent on promoting strife among brethren, might 
bring about a season of estrangement, but the unity of 
their destiny as the keepers of the covenant, and as the 
instruments of the accomplishment of Israel's mission in 
the earth, is stronger than evil and all its machinations. 

Next in the record we have the classification of Jacob's 
twelve sons according to their individual characteristics, 
as given in the picturesque and figurative language of 
that time. Jacob was briefly describing what should be- 
fall them "in the last days." From this phrase it is 
evident that he was not speaking of them as individuals, 
but as branches of Israel. It was in his consciousness 
that Israel was born, and Jacob is now looking across 
the intervening years to the fulfilment of God's promise 
concerning his line. Great things had been spoken of his 
seed as had been of his fathers before him. Up to this 
time the stream had been flowing in one channel, but 
now it was to branch out into twelve. What was to be 
their course, and their relative influence and importance ? 

From Jacob's analysis of the character and quality of 
these human branches, it would appear that not all of 
them would contribute to the moral and spiritual strength 
of the nation. While admitted into the human family 
of Israel as the sons of Jacob, they were not all of the 
selected seed. To paraphrase a well-known passage in 
the New Testament, They are not all of spiritual Israel 
who are of national Israel. As Paul wrote to Timothy, 
" In a great house there are not only vessels of gold and 
of silver, but also of wood and of earth; and some to 
honor and some to dishonor." And so in the human side 
of Israel, that is, among the personal units making up the 
nation, there would be the gold and the silver, the wood 
and the earth, some to honor and some to dishonor. 



JOSEPH AND JUDAH 57 

In his long and intimate association with his sons, dur- 
ing which he had doubtless instructed them in all that he 
had learned of God, he would naturally observe the qual- 
ity and tendency of their thoughts, having in mind the 
time when they would enlarge into a nation, and become 
" as the sand which is upon the sea shore " for multitude. 
How had they received his instructions? or to what ex- 
tent had they responded to the truth which he had im- 
parted to them? What would be the blossom and the 
fruit to be borne by these vines, or types of thought? 
The old patriarch had probably pondered deeply and 
often over these things which were so near his heart, 
but he never lost the faith of his vision, and felt as- 
sured that Israel w^ould in the end accomplish her high 
purpose. 

It will be noticed that in these final prophetic words 
of Jacob, the most attention and the greatest prominence 
are given to Joseph and Judah. We have already seen 
the high place which the family of Joseph held in his 
thoughts, and here the old man's words glow with loving 
pride as he pictures the great destiny of his best beloved 
son. But it was not alone the effusion of a fond father, 
it was rather the joy of knowing that these blessings 
from God would come to the house of Joseph because it 
was the most worthy to receive them. The chief family 
among his sons in his own time, and the chief family of 
the nation that was yet to be, Joseph would become the 
object of envy and hatred. "The archers have sorely 
grieved him, and shot at him, and hated him : but his bow 
abode in strength, and the arms of his hands were made 
strong by the hands of the mighty God of Jacob: (from 
thence is the shepherd, the stone of Israel) ." This " guar- 
dian stone," as Ferrar Fenton translates it, this symbol 
of God's presence with Jacob, was thus to be with Joseph 
" in the last days." He was to be strengthened by " the 
mighty God of Jacob," because, with the doubly-blessed 
families of Ephraim and Manasseh, would be found the 
vision of Jacob at Bethel, and the victory of Israel at 
Peniel. 



58 FOOTSTEPS OF ISRAEL 

The special distinction of Judah was that from him 
would come the kingly line. " The sceptre shall not de- 
part from Judah, nor a lawgiver from between his feet, 
until Shiloh come." The records give scant information 
of this member of Jacob's family so far as possessing any 
particular fitness for this distinguished position such as we 
find in the case of Joseph. But Jacob was not depending 
upon records or human judgment. He was reading the 
future, somewhat dimly to be sure, in the light of revela- 
tion. His family as yet were but a handful, and centuries 
w^ere to elapse before they would become a nation, or be 
under kingly government ; but Jacob foresaw a royal line 
emerging from the family of Judah, and he foresaw that 
it would continue unbroken until such time as a greater 
than earthly rulers should appear in Israel and take over 
the government, first of this nation^ and eventually of 
the whole world. 

This remarkable pronouncement regarding his sons 
would naturally be treasured in their traditions, and its 
substance was probably put later into the poetic form in 
which we now have it. While it is presented in figures 
of speech which are not readily understood or interpreted 
by the modern reader, the important points that stand 
out with sufficient clearness to be not easily mistaken are 
these: that his statements referred to a period which 
would not begin for centuries after they were spoken, and 
which would continue until merely human government 
would be outgrown — that is, when divine law would be 
sufificiently perceived and loved to supersede it ; that dur- 
ing that period Israel the nation would be divided into 
two main branches, that of Joseph and Judah; that the 
line of Joseph was to be the guardian, protector, and 
preserver of what Israel stood for, both literally and 
spiritually; that the line of Judah was the line of royalty, 
and from it would proceed the dynasty which would 
reign until people and nations learned to be governed 
by their obedience to good, rather than by human persons. 

While these utterances of Jacob are valuable as con- 
firming, in the light of subsequent events, the substantial 



JOSEPH AND JUDAH 59 

accuracy of the early Scriptural records, it would be the 
crudest superstition to suppose that the future status of 
Joseph and Judah, or their relative positions in the family 
of Israel or in the world, were in any sense at his dis- 
posal. It would be equally superstitious to suppose that 
he was uttering the arbitrary decrees of a personal deity, 
of like changeableness and of like belief in good and 
evil as are the thoughts of mortals. Jacob was one of 
the parties to the Abrahamic covenant of blessing, and 
the one in whose experience Israel first appeared by 
name. " By faith " he saw the fulfilment of these 
promises "afar off" (Heb. 11:13), and he saw them 
being fulfilled in Joseph and Judah, and in a lesser degree 
in some of his other sons. From that mental elevation 
he perceived, in a rather general way, what would be the 
outcome of the seed implanted in human consciousness 
by himself and his fathers. Jesus referred to this ex- 
alted vision when he said to the Jews, "Your father 
Abraham rejoiced to see my day." 

The chief function of Joseph, in being thus placed at 
the head of the nation, was not merely to supply the 
multiplicity of seed mentioned in the covenant with Ab- 
raham. This was the least vital part of the covenant. 
The supply of a large population to Israel is entirely in- 
adequate as a reason for Joseph's preeminence. It is ob- 
vious that a multiplicity of seed would not of itself bless 
either Israel or the race generally. It would signify abso- 
lutely nothing to human welfare for the house of Joseph 
to become as the sand upon the seashore for multitude, un- 
less this multitude also possessed the spiritual qualities 
through which good might reach and uplift mankind. 
We read that the angel said to Hagar, the Egyptian, " I 
will multiply thy seed exceedingly, that it shall not be 
numbered for multitude," but that does not place Ishmael 
on a level with Joseph. For that matter, the Chinese out- 
number the Anglo-Saxons, but that does not mean they 
are more important to progress and civilization. As has 
been pointed out, the difference between the Israelites 
and the rest of the human race was not material but 



6o FOOTSTEPS OF ISRAEL 

mental; it was a difference of consciousness, not of 
person or of numbers. The only advantage of a multi- 
plicity of the seed of Israel after the flesh would be a 
correspondingly multiplicity of the seed of Israel after the 
Spirit, to be a leaven among the nations, which would 
mean that Joseph's high place in Israel and in the world 
implied something more valuable than numbers or ma- 
terial prestige. The promise to Abraham of a numerous 
posterity was contingent for its blessing upon his spirit- 
uality, and the spirituality of his seed, for otherwise they 
would be no greater blessing to the earth than a like 
number of other mortals. 

It is true the kingly line was to come from Judah, but 
that does not necessarily imply spiritual superiority. The 
average king has not proved himself to be better, or more 
valuable to his race, than the average commoner. That 
kings should be born of Abraham was not the cardinal 
point of the covenant. Kings were born of Gentiles 
also. The foundation of the covenant with Abraham 
was not a question of kingship, but of his knowledge of 
and faithfulness to God. This oft-repeated covenant is 
summed up in the promise, " And thou shalt be a bless- 
ing," or more comprehensively stated, " In thee shall all 
families of the earth be blessed." It was wholly a cov- 
enant of blessing, and its nature was therefore essentially 
spiritual. The other and lesser features were incidental, 
and while they will not be lacking, their importance 
should not be unduly emphasized. The man who had 
left his father's house and his kindred, and who had 
proved his willingness to sacrifice his own son, if neces- 
sary, " for the kingdom of heaven's sake," would not be 
without his earthly reward. The good things of the 
human were to be his also, — lands, possessions, kindred, 
dominion, but the identifying sign of the rediscovery of 
Israel will not consist of these secondary things. It will 
not be found in a multitude of seed or of nations, nor 
will it be wealth or dominion. Israel in the latter days 
must be found blessing all the nations of the earth, and 
that will be the real test. 



JOSEPH AND JUDAH 6i 

The history of the house of Judah up to the present 
time, that is to say, the history of the Jews as distin- 
guished from the house of Joseph, and as dispersed 
among the nations, gives no indication of the fulfilment 
of the terms of the covenant. The Jews have not proved 
themselves to be the guardians and preservers of the true 
idea of Israel, or to be a blessing to all the families of 
the earth. Although the Messiah came through Judah, 
in the line of David, the Jews as a class absolutely repu- 
diated him, and have since continued to do so. When 
the light for which Israel had waited and watched so 
long eventually came, as the prophets of Israel had fore- 
told, Judah would have snuffed it out as a candle. The 
Jews were so blinded by the thought of earthly kingship 
that they could not recognize their heavenly King when 
he appeared, much less do him honor. " He came unto 
his own," his own family in Israel, the family of the 
kings, "and his own received him not." 

Thus we turn to Joseph, the chosen representative of 
Israel, for the fulfilment of the covenant, not the cov- 
enant relating to a multitude of seed, or of material pros- 
perity, or of political dominion, although these are 
necessarily included, but the covenant of spiritual bless- 
ing. It remains to be seen if Ephraim and Manasseh, the 
two in one of the house of Joseph, are found in their 
place in these latter days, the guardian of God's cove- 
nants, and a blessing to the human race. 



CHAPTER VII 
From Horeb to the Red Sea 

And God said unto Moses, I AM THAT I AM : and 

He said, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, 
I AM hath sent me unto you. 

And God said moreover unto Moses, Thus shalt thou 
say unto the children of Israel, The Lord God of your 
fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and 
the God of Jacob, hath sent me unto you: this is My 
name for ever, and this is My memorial unto all genera- 
tions. — Ex. 3:14, 15. 

And what one nation in the earth is like thy people, 
even like Israel, whom God went to redeem for a people 
to Himself, and to make Him a name, and to do for you 
great things and terrible, for thy land, before thy people, 
which thou redeemest to thee from Egypt, from the 
nations and their gods ? — II Sam. 7 : 23. 

For He remembered His holy promise, and Abraham 
His servant. 

And He brought forth His people with joy, and His 
chosen with gladness. — Ps. 105:42, 43. 

SOMETIME after the passing of Joseph a new 
dynasty arose in Egypt which looked upon the He- 
brews with disfavor, ostensibly because of their 
rapid increase, and means were sought to prevent their 
becoming a menace to the Egyptians. A system of indus- 
trial oppression was deliberately planned and executed in 
order to lessen their numbers, but failed of its purpose. 
Finally according to tradition, the king, becoming fright- 
ened because of a prophecy that a Hebrew would be born 
who would overthrow his kingdom, decreed the destruc- 
tion of all the male infants of the Israelites. 

With the birth and remarkable preservation of Moses 
the line of the woman again swings into view. The en- 
mity of the serpent, becoming instinctively aroused at the 
approach of the next step, forward in the spiritual march 
of Israel, would have wiped out the whole Hebrew race 
to prevent it. The carnal mind's resistance to every- 



FROM HOREB TO THE RED SEA 63 

thing spiritual would have frustrated the deliverance of 
Israel by destroying the human instrument chosen for 
this work, an attempt that was repeated some thirteen 
centuries later at the time of the birth of Jesus; but 
the means by which God has been made known to hu- 
manity has never been left unprotected, for it is not in 
the power of evil to deflect a single ray of Truth on 
its way to earth. 

God's impartial choice of an instrument for His pur- 
pose is again seen in the selection of Moses. He was 
at this time to be made known to Israel, not as to a 
solitai-y individual, or to a family, but to a people ; and 
the most receptive thought for this work was found 
neither in Joseph nor in Judah, but in Levi. It might be 
of interest to note here that, according to the Jewish 
Talmud, the men of this tribe had refused to enter the 
service of Pharaoh, for which wages were at first paid, 
and that they were not therefore pressed into the unpaid 
servitude later imposed upon the Hebrews. This would 
imply that the Levites were more alert than their brethren 
in detecting the snare which had been laid for them. 
Whether this may be true or not, it was again evident 
that God is not influenced by the claims of human birth- 
right or of family distinction, but is best known at the 
point in human consciousness w^here there is least 
resistance. 

As an inmate of the royal household, Moses was 
necessarily dissociated from his own kindred, but with! 
all his Egyptian education and environment he remained 
at heart an Israelite. Eventually fleeing from Egypt, 
in consequence of his impetuous attempt to avenge a 
fellow countryman, we next find him in Midian em- 
ployed as a shepherd by his father-in-law. In his quiet 
pastoral life, which appears to have continued during the 
forty years of his exile, he naturally thought much of 
the history of his race, of God's covenant with Abra- 
ham, Isaac, and Jacob, and of the desperate plight of 
his brethren in Egypt. There is no doulDt that his com- 
munion with God, in the secret of his own thoughts, 



64 FOOTSTEPS OF ISRAEL 

and his mental appeal for the deliverance of his people, 
prepared him in large measure for his unique mission. 

On a day memorable in the history of Israel, Moses 
had taken his flocks to the slopes of Mount Horeb, 
when he was attracted by the appearance of a flaming 
bush, which burned without being consumed. Whether 
what he saw and heard that day was but the objectifica- 
tion of his own thoughts is immaterial. When it comes 
to that, nothing that we see or hear is external to our 
own mental consciousness. One thing, however, is cer- 
tain : Moses there came face to face with a higher revela- 
tion of the nature and being of Deity than had yet been 
m.ade known. He became aware, not through the eye 
or ear, or any material sense, that he was in the very 
presence of the God of his fathers; and he felt that 
what was there present to his spiritual sense was not for 
the human eye to see, for we read that he " hid his face." 

Moses was undoubtedly conscious of God's voice 
speaking to him, whether audibly or only mentally mat- 
ters not. His subsequent history abundantly demon- 
strated that his instructions and his commission came 
from a divine source. We need have no doubt whatever, 
if we believe in God at all, that on this occasion Moses 
actually communed with the Infinite, and that he became 
aware, with the distinctness of a spoken command, that 
he was divinely commissioned to undertake the deliv- 
erance of his people. His natural reflections upon his 
humanly obvious infirmity, and his timorous lack of con- 
fidence, were met by the same divine assurance that came 
to Jacob at Bethel, "Certainly I will be with thee." 

Moses' request for a definite name by which he could 
speak of God to the Israelites indicates the vague con- 
ception of Deity which apparently obtained among them. 
The result of his appeal was an unfoldment of the 
eternal nature of God. It became clear to him that what 
he and his fathers had worshipped was self-existent and 
unchanging Being. *' And God said unto Moses, I AM 
THAT I AM " ; in other words, I am now what I always 
was and always will be. Out on the quiet mountain side, 



FROM HOREB TO THE RED SEA 65 

far from the oppressor and the oppressed, the highest 
revelation of God up to tliat time was becoming articu- 
late to human consciousness; and this divine revelation 
was to accompany Moses and enable him to be the de- 
liverer of the children of Israel. He was to say that 
the I AM had sent him, and to assure them that this 
supreme, self-existent Being was the same God whom 
their fathers Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob had known; 
and that this was to be His name, His changeless charac- 
ter and identity, forever. Here was a clear affirmation 
of the oneness of Deity, whose nature, and whose rela- 
tion to man, are necessarily incapable of change. 

Moses, however, persisted in the belief that the people 
would not believe him nor credit his mission. How 
could he convince the Israelites that lie came to them 
from God? What token of authority could he show them 
that they would accept? And he was there given three 
signs, to prove to his people that God was with him, and 
would bring to pass all that he promised in His name. 
To the outward sense of things these " signs " might 
seem little better than juggler's tricks, wholly inconsistent 
with the dignity of the Almighty, so that it is necessary 
to get their metaphysical sense in order properly to 
appraise their value, or to understand their human and 
divine relation. 

The first sign plainly signified the overcoming of the 
serpent. What could this sign mean except that the 
subtlety of eVil had no power to harm when handled by 
a knowledge of tlje omnipotence of God? Many centu- 
ries later the great Master said, " Behold, I give you 
power to tread on serpents" ; which obviously means far 
more than treading unharmed upon poisonous reptiles, 
and that is, overcoming the enmity of the carnal mind. 
This was exemplified throughout Moses' encounters with 
Pharaoh, when God gave him power to meet and defeat 
the hatred of evil towards the spiritual purpose of Israel. 

The second sign distinctly implied the power to heal 
disease. The actual presence of God had been spiritually 
unveiled to Moses, and in that glorious light his fear 



66 FOOTSTEPS OF ISRAEL 

of the disease most dreaded by the Hebrews was visibly 
uncovered to him and destroyed. To the unchanging 
perfection of the infinite I AM, disease could have no 
presence, and in this experience it was proved unmis- 
takably that leprosy, with all other forms of disease, 
was but a falsity of human sense. This exhibition of 
divine healing was to be a sign to Israel of the authority 
of God's messenger. God declared Himself in Horeb, 
as He did afterwards in the wilderness of Shur, as 
"the Lord that healeth thee." This sign of healing, it 
will be remembered, also sealed the authority of the 
Messiah, and it must, consistently, be a sign also of 
the coming of " Shiloh," at the end of " the times of 
the Gentiles." 

The third sign, that of the changing of water into 
blood, which was to be the most convincing of them all, 
would seem on the surface to be merely an act of magic, 
without the faintest relation to Moses' God-ordained 
ministry. But it may be recalled, in this connection, 
that, according to St. John, the first sign of Jesus' min- 
istry was the changing of water into wine. The apparent 
metaphysical meaning of this third sign was, that an 
understanding of God gives men dominion over so-called 
material laws. This was to be a sign, not only to Moses 
but to Israel, and in this particular instance was to 
furnish the final proof of his divine authority. The evi- 
dent design was to show that matter had neither law 
nor inherent substance wherewith to oppose man's spir- 
itual dominion. It is undeniable that the intelligence 
or power which lay back of these signs, when thus meta- 
physically understood, was the Mind which we call God ; 
and their logical purpose, when this is considered, was 
to show the unreliability of the evidence put forward by 
the mind which we call evil or material, otherwise desig- 
nated as the carnal mind. Anything short of this would 
be purely human in its origin and purpose, and therefore 
incapable alike of blessing the human or of proving the 
divine. Moses was going forward on his mission to 
deliver his people by means of the truth that good and 



FROM HOREB TO THE RED SEA 6^ 

not evil is power, and the perception and expression of 
that truth has been and must continue to be the founda- 
tion of Israel in all ages. 

It need not be supposed that the signs here delivered 
to Moses were for his day only, to be used merely for the 
purpose of convincing the doubting Thomases in the 
land of Goshen. They were to prove to the Israelites 
that the God of their fathers was not a myth but a 
reality, and that in His name they were to be redeemed ; 
but these signs were, naturally, to remain until the " resti- 
tution of all things " is accomplished. These proofs of 
authority must, consequently, be presented by spiritual 
Israel today and tomorrow as well as yesterday. The 
Israelites of the twentieth century, held in the oppressive 
grasp of materialism, are not more likely to accept the 
divine Word without the proofs of its verity, than were 
the Israelites who were groaning under the oppression 
of Egypt. In the confusion of these latter days, when 
evil seems to be "going to and fro in the earth," there 
is danger of forgetting that " I AM THAT I AM " is 
God's name forever; and that His reign and authority 
must be understood and made visible "till He hath put 
all enemies under His feet." 

While the Israelites wxre convinced that Moses was 
sent of God, Pharaoh was obdurate in refusing their 
appeal for liberty, and there followed that wonderful 
series of retributive experiences known as the plagues 
of Egypt. The carnal mind, insane with its sense of 
power over the bodies of men, and deaf to the demands 
of justice, blindly entered into a conflict with God. 
Pharaoh increased the oppression and multiplied the 
hardships of the Israelites, of those to whom God had 
said, " I will take you to Me for a people, and I will be 
to you a God." Pharaoh's challenge to the Almighty 
was like the beating of the sea against a rocky cliff, the 
only effect of which was to send the waves recoiling 
upon themselves. The sensual element in human thought 
would have destroyed Israel for its own gratification, but 
its hatred and fuiy only returned in torment upon itself. 



68 FOOTSTEPS OF ISRAEL 

It was not necessary for Moses, standing before 
Pharaoh as God's representative, to do more than to let 
the carnal mind experience the lash and the sting of its 
own evil thoughts, for it is certain that these evils or 
plagues could have no origin or source outside the carnal 
mind itself. Although the superstitious and unenlight- 
ened may believe otherwise, we should know in this 
day that it is morally and literally impossible for evil of 
any sort to come forth from God, or to be made use of by 
Him, since in His very nature He is essentially all good. 
Human consciousness is frightened and tormented by 
the images created by its own baleful thoughts, and by the 
exposure of its own sinfulness, but never by the Love 
which is God. 

Threatened finally with the fear of extinction, Pharaoh 
released his strangle- hold upon the Israelites, and they 
began their momentous journey to the land which had 
been promised to Abraham, and to his descendants 
through Isaac and Jacob. The impressive prelude to this 
journey was the institution of the Passover, designed to 
commemorate Israel's deliverance from Egypt, and which 
remains in the language as a type of human redemption. 
More particularly, it may be said to typify the human 
journey from a material to a spiritual consciousness of 
existence. This ordinance was to be observed by the 
Israelites until the advent of the Messiah should make 
it unnecessary, but while the form and the symbols are 
no longer needed, the idea remains, and must continue 
inseparable from the real nature of Israel. 

The morrow was to bring the Israelites freedom from 
industrial slavery, the right to national existence, and 
ultimately the possession of a national home. This lib- 
erty had been won, not through warfare or political in- 
fluence, but through the demonstration of the sovereignty 
of Spirit over the asserted despotism of the carnal mind, 
although to the great mass of the Hebrews at that time 
it meant little more than release from intolerable hard- 
ship. The conflict between Moses and Pharaoh fore- 
shadowed the greater and more lasting conflict between 



FROM HOREB TO THE RED SEA 69 

spiritual understanding and material belief, a conflict 
which must continue until evil is finally extinguished for 
lack of evidence. '' We be Abraham's seed, and were 
never in bondage to any man," said the Jews to Jesus; but 
the Master, thmking of higher things than human pos- 
terity, replied, "If the Son . . . shall make you free, 
ye shall be free indeed." At Peniel Jacob had gained his 
spiritual victory as a " prince " or son of God. Moses 
was here doing the same, not for himself alone but for 
the nation. This idea of freedom was inherent in Israel 
from the beginning, and was finely expressed by St. 
Paul as " the glorious liberty of the children of God." 
Wherever Israel is today, she will have to prove her 
pKDsition by establishing freedom within her borders, 
in its industrial, political, medical, religious and other 
aspects, for the true seed of Abraham, those who rejoice 
to see the day of the Christ, cannot be held in bondage. 
As it was in Egypt, so it will be in America and England, 
and in the world: spiritual Israel will bring freedom to 
literal Israel, and eventually to all mankind. 

And so we find the young nation setting out on its pil- 
grimage to the land promised long before to Abraham 
and his seed; but what they apparently did not under- 
stand was, that their journey was in reality mental, and 
that the real promised land was to be reached through 
dominion over their evil thoughts. Had they' recognized 
this, they might have been spared their long and need- 
lessly devious wanderings. Because of its natural per- 
versity and disinclination to reform, the human mind 
makes for itself a long road through the wilderness, 
along which it must learn its needed lessons. 

It is true the Israelites had come " out of great tribu- 
lation,'' but they were withal a rebellious and stubborn 
people. They railed at Moses while he was working for 
their freedom, and when Pharaoh came in pursuit they 
reproached him for taking^ them out of Egypt. But with 
all that, other thinsfs being equal, the average Israelite 
of that time, standing fearfully before the Red Sea, and 
thinking of the comparative safety of his slave pen in 



70 FOOTSTEPS OF ISRAEL 

Egypt, was not inferior to the average Christian of today 
if faced with as great danger. 

The great distinction between the people of Israel and 
the nations around them was, that in Israel God was 
being proved to be a demonstrable reality, and not a 
mythical personality, as the prophet Elijah so convinc- 
ingly proved in later years. 

This, without question, must be regarded as an im- 
portant point in the consideration of Israel restored, for 
the God of Israel must be proved by His people today 
as fully as He was in the early morning of our history; 
and this experience will be as indispensable in restoring 
Israel to her rightful place, literally and spiritually, as 
it was in bringing her out of Egyptian servitude. It 
were better that we seal our lips and lay aside our pens 
on the subject of Israel's restoration, unless we can show 
that the signs of Moses are being revived, and that our 
God is able to deliver from the Pharaoh of the twentieth 
century. 

In a narrow pass, with the Red Sea across their path 
and the pursuing Egyptians close behind, the Israelites 
seemed indeed to be in their last extremity. From a 
materialistic standpoint there was no possible avenue of 
escape unless they could defeat the Egyptians, which 
seemed too unlikely to consider. What could God do 
for them in such a plight? Why had Moses led them 
there to die so miserably? Yet the command came for 
the children of Israel to go forward. " Certainly I will 
be with thee," God had said to Moses ; and during their 
journey His presence was palpable to the human 
sense of the people as " a pillar of cloud," and at night 
as " a pillar of fire." " And the angel of God, which 
went before the camp of Israel, removed and went be- 
hind them; and the pillar of the cloud went from before 
their face, and stood behind them." Here was a wall 
of protection which no earthly power could break 
through. We read that this visible token of divine 
presence, which was a guide and a light to the Israelites, 
appeared as darkness to the Egyptians; and so it must 



FROM HOREB TO THE RED SEA 71 

ever seem to the carnal mind. In the light of this inci- 
dent the story of the ''angels of Mons," protecting the 
rear of the retreating British, does not seem such a re- 
mote possibility. 

The Lord, Moses announced, was to fight for them 
that day, — not against the persons of the Egyptians 
in their rear, but against that which frightened them in 
the way forward, and that was their belief that matter 
could destroy their life. The human decree of material 
power, which threatened the Israelites with death if they 
obeyed the command to continue their march, was 
clearly shown to be without divine sanction. It was a 
self-destructive edict of the carnal mind, whose enmity 
spiritual Israel was to confound that day and save the 
nation alive. Moses was about to give them again, in 
an even larger meaning, his third sign, the proof of 
man's spiritual dominion over matter. Many centuries 
later Jesus gave the same proof by walking on the sea. 

It is a matter of regret that writers on the Restora- 
tion period, as a general rule, pay little or no attention 
to these tremendously vital points, inasmuch as the 
mental and moral enemies of Israel have been the same 
in all ages, and the means for their defeat must of 
necessity remain the same. The Scriptural record in- 
dicates that, as these enemies were overcome, the ex- 
ternal enemies of the nation were easily vanquished. If 
it is true that Israel exists among the nations of the 
world today, she must stand for the same thing she stood 
for in the beginning, and that was the bruising of the 
head of the serpent, or the conquest of the carnal mind, 
the source of all evil. If this were not the purpose of 
Israel's existence, it must, naturally, be the opposite ; that 
is to say, it would exist for the perpetuation of material- 
ism. There is no choice but to acknowledge one of 
these positions. Israel restored would mean, without 
question, either the defeat or the enthronement of ma- 
terialism, with all that is necessarily included in that 
term. One would have to read history with blind eyes 
not to know that the latter outcome would belie every 



TZ FOOTSTEPS OF ISRAEL 

revelation of God which came through Israel, and every 
announcement of her mission to be found within the 
covers of the Scriptures. Joshua made it unequivocably 
plain that Israel stood for the service of the Lord, not 
of Baal; of divine Mind, not of the carnal mind; and 
this fact must be recognized if one would not lose the 
keynote of this whole subject. Without her spiritual 
vision, Israel would be an empty sound, meaning nothing 
and imparting nothing to human welfare. 

The children of Israel, encouraged by the undismayed 
faith of Moses, went forward, and the sea made way for 
their safe passage; but the pursuing Egyptians, urged 
onward in the mad effort to thwart the will of God, had 
no defense against those walls of water. To the im- 
mature thought of the Hebrews, their enemies met de- 
struction at the hands of God, and even Moses appears 
to have gloried in that belief, but to the best thought 
of the present age such a view is harsh and repellent. 
It is to be remembered, however, that those were pre- 
Christian times, and although there had come the per- 
ception that God was all-powerful and eternal, apparently 
there was not the faintest glimpse of God as Love, of 
being Himself the life of all His creation. 

Their remarkable deliverance naturally made a deep 
impression upon the thought of the Israelites, but there 
began to creep in at the same time the belief that the 
Almighty personally favored them above the rest of 
mankind, and that He looked upon their enemies as His 
enemies. Thus we find Moses and the people celebrating 
their escape from the Egyptians in a song that breathed 
the spirit of an Indian warrior gloating over his fallen 
enemies. "The Lord is a man of war," sang Moses; 
" Thy right hand, O Lord, hath dashed in pieces the 
enemy." It is true that this is poetry, and many ex- 
travagant expressions may be covered by poetic license, 
but this sentiment appeared to be the genuine conviction 
of the Israelites, and the crude conception of Deity 
therein set forth was no doubt responsible for the in- 
human deeds which stained much of their later history. 



FROM HOREB TO THE RED SEA 73 

The unregenerate human mind is cruelty in itself, be- 
cause its sole concern is for itself; and when this so- 
called mind claims Deity to be its particular champion 
and defender, it is capable of the utmost barbarity, as 
human records darkly testify. 

Without doubt, it was Moses' absolute reliance upon 
God which preserved the Israelites at this critical time, 
but the Egyptians were plainly drawn to their destruc- 
tion by their own evil impulses. God was no more the 
instrument of death to those thousands of mortals than 
He is to a new-born infant. It is sinful human thought 
that involves individuals and nations in trouble and 
disaster, and unless we recognize this fact of evil's self- 
punishment, we are not prepared to fully understand 
God's impartial attitude towards all mankind, and to 
discriminate between the utterances of divine inspira- 
tion and the human misinterpretation of God's relation 
to Israel which we sometimes find in the Old Testament 
narratives. 

" And God spake unto Moses, and said unto him, I 
am the Lord ; and I appeared unto Abraham, unto Isaac, 
and unto Jacob, by the name of God Almighty, but by 
My name JEHOVAH was I not known to them." The 
word which has been rendered thus into English has 
been given various meanings. According to one trans- 
lator it meant literally a chief or chieftain, as the lord 
of a tribe or clan, and from this may have arisen the 
Hebrew concept of God as Jehovah, that is, as their own 
national and exclusive Deity. This idea was expressed 
in the song of Moses, and appears to have been readily 
accepted by the people. That God was to be their own 
Lord, the great chieftain or head of their group of fami- 
lies or tribes, afterwards to be known as the nation of 
Israel, naturally appealed to the thoughts of this primi- 
tive race, but it developed a narrow conception of Deity 
that was not helpful to themselves, either spiritually or 
nationally. It fostered the belief that they were a 
specially sacred people, of more consequence to God than 
the nations about them, the effect of which was to close 



-} 



74 FOOTSTEPS OF ISRAEL 

their eyes to the nature of God as infinite good, and 
therefore as being in reality the same to all. 

This limited or imperfect apprehension of divinity con- 
tained the seeds of future idolatry, but, notwithstanding 
this misconception of the Supreme Being, which was 
probably due in large measure to their association with 
the Egyptians, what was then known of the true God 
was to be found among the Israelites; and this knowl- 
edge, inseparable as it was from their national identity, 
precluded the possibility of their national extinction. 



CHAPTER VIII 
The Covenants in the Wilderness 

He sent His word, and healed them, and delivered 
them from their destructions. — Ps. 107 : 20. 

If iniquity be in thine hand, put it far away, and let 
not wickedness dwell in thy tabernacles. — Job ii : 14. 

THE Israelites were now well on theii' way to the 
redemption of God's promise to Abraham regard- 
ing their possession of the land of Canaan, but 
a long way it was destined to prove, and few of this 
large host were privileged to enter it. It was truly no 
light thing in that day nor is it in this, to acknowledge one- 
self to be an Israelite, for the inner meaning of that name 
implies dominion over evil. Because Jacob prevailed 
over his earthly weakness, up to the point of being di- 
vinely blessed, he was given the name or title of Israel; 
and the same subjugation of evil tendencies pertains to 
that name wherever it is rightly used. If we keep this 
well in view we shall find that we are not dealing with or- 
dinary human history, but with the gradual unfolding to 
human consciousness of spiritual truth, as it was coming 
through this people. 

Israel, so far as its meaning was rightly understood, 
constituted a challenge to the legitimacy of a dual nature 
in man. It took up the issue with evil on the ground of 
God's supremacy, that He alone is represented in crea- 
tion, and, although the conflict was more or less fitful, 
the Israelites alone represented this issue in the world, 
and for that reason they were marking a course through 
history distinctly different from that of any other race 
or nation. It is sometimes difficult from this distance 
to fairly appreciate the peculiar position of this people, 
or how much they were accomplishing for the future of 
the human family. Notwithstanding their primitive and 



^6 FOOTSTEPS OF ISRAEL 

uncultured state, we must gratefully admit that they 
filled a most essential and vital place in the spiritual de- 
velopment of mankind, the logical outcome of which was 
the coming of Christianity. 

The prolonged sojourn of the Israelites in the wilder- 
ness was but the expression of their mental unreadiness to 
be governed by God alone. The innate reluctance of 
human sense to yield to the divine, that is, to abandon the 
sensual for the spiritual, necessarily subjects it to disci- 
plinary experiences. The Hebrews were willing enough 
to be Abraham's seed so far as inheriting a land '' flowing 
with milk and honey," but it was quite another considera- 
tion to be the children of Israel in the true sense of over- 
coming their sinful tendencies. The thought of freedom 
in a land of plenty was certainly more attractive than 
making bricks in Egypt for a mere subsistence, but the 
larger meaning of liberty as the freedom to obey God, 
for which their father Abraham left his home and kin- 
dred, was not, it would seem, very clearly understood or 
esteemed by them. 

The Israelites are frequently referred to as the people 
of the "covenant," meaning usually by that term the 
well-known covenant with Abraham, as if there were 
but one. There were two other covenants, however, up 
to this time of sufficient distinction to be named, and 
these were the covenants of Eden and Noah. Spiritual 
Israel began with the first, and may properly be called 
"the line of the woman,"- meaning by that phrase the 
spiritual subjugation of the carnal mind, as distinguished 
from the too unresisting submission to its suggestions 
by the majority of mankind. 

The idea of national Israel began with the Abra- 
hamic covenant, wherein, among other things, is the 
assurance of an innumerable posterity, which was to 
become divided into a "multitude of nations." This 
covenant was afterward confirmed with Isaac, and again 
with Jacob, which thus confined the constitution of na- 
tional Israel to the latter's descendants. We read that 
God made this covenant with Abraham because he had 



THE COVENANTS IN THE WILDERNESS j'] 

obeyed His voice in preference to the impulses of human 
nature. This condition of obedience constituted its para- 
mount factor on the human side, and its observance must 
necessarily be inseparable from Israel's destiny, both 
spiritually and as a nation. 

In the course of time other covenants were added 
which amplified the meaning and mission of Israel in 
the world. The first of these was announced after the 
incident of the healing of the waters at Marah, and may 
be called the Covenant of Health. Possibly a more fit- 
ting name would be the Forgotten Covenant, since it 
appears to have completely escaped the notice of writers 
on this subject, although it will be found that nothing 
pertains more intimately to the function of the true 
Israelite, or to the interest and well-being of the human 
race. The phraseology is significantly clear and final : 
" If thou wilt diligently hearken to the voice of the Lord 
thy God, and wilt do that which is right in His sight, 
and wilt give ear to His commandments, and keep all 
His statutes, I will put none of these diseases upon thee, 
Avhich I have brought upon the Egyptians : for I am the 
Lord that healeth thee." In Isaac Leeser's translation 
the last clause reads, '' for I the Lord am thy physician," 
a most momentous statement surely, in view of the uni- 
versal need of humanity for better health. 

This covenant is a definite undertaking, under pre- 
scribed conditions, to maintain the health of Israel. The 
language and the meaning are unmistakable. Here it 
is given on Scriptural authority that the basis of health is 
righteousness, alias right thinking; while, conversely, it 
necessarily implies that the source of disease is unright- 
eousness, alias wrong thinking. This covenant also shows 
that health and healing lie directly in the line of spiritual 
Israel, while the processes of disease are to be found only 
in the carnal mind. Moses was teaching the children of 
Israel that only as they conformed to God's requirements 
could they receive protection from the troubles of the 
Egyptians, a term which to them meant the people who 
knew not God. 



78 FOOTSTEPS OF ISRAEL 

To emphasize this covenant it was repeated at Sinai : 
"And ye shall serve the Lord your God, and He shall 
bless thy bread and thy water; and I will take sickness 
away from the midst of thee." There is still another 
repetition in Deuteronomy 7:15. Why all these repeti- 
tions if this covenant was not intended to be' operative, 
and if it did not involve in its operation the real life and 
prosperity of the Israelites? This oft-repeated covenant 
is precise and emphatic in its provision for the health 
of the people, without a modifying reference to or al- 
lowance for a human substitute. The statement, that 
God is the Physician of His people, is too absolute for 
exception, precisely as it is in other matters wherein He 
is named as their Saviour and Deliverer. 

It is recorded in the book of Hebrews that Moses was 
" educated in all the wisdom of the Egyptians " ; he must, 
accordingly, have been conversant with the modes of 
healing practised in that country. Therefore, in an- 
nouncing this covenant of the Lord with reference to the 
health of the Israelites, and the divine means of healing 
disease, he could not have been ignorant of the fact that 
physicians and material medicines existed among the 
other nations. But he was also well aware that Israel 
was not to be patterned after these other nations. It had 
been declared that God would take them to Him for a 
people, and that He would be their God. The fact that 
no other nation acknowledged the God of Abraham, 
Isaac, and Jacob, was sufficient reason for the radical 
differences that might exist between Israel and her neigh- 
bors, in this as well as in other matters. God had 
brought them out from Eg}^pt with '' a mighty hand." 
He had taken them in safety through the Red Sea, 
and was surely equal to the redemption of their bodies 
from disease, provided they obeyed His voice. Had 
they not seen the sign of healing which Moses brought 
to them in Egypt, direct from his communion with 
God? 

There appears to have been no murmuring or com- 
plaining on the part of the Israelites on account of this 



THE COVENANTS IN THE WILDERNESS 79 

covenant. There was to them nothing illogical in the 
announcement that their health was to be contingent 
upon moral rather than physical conditions. It is ap- 
parent from this that they had progressed farther than 
the nations around them, inasmuch as they were ready 
to learn that disease was a product of evil thought. 
That this covenant was accepted literally by Moses and 
the people is seen from the fact that, in the elaborate 
code of laws and regulations which he later provided 
for them, there was no provision for the medical treat- 
ment of disease. There is no authentic record that the 
practice of medicine was ever taught in the Hebrew 
schools, or that there were any native physicians among 
them. 

In a standard Bible Encyclopedia, these things are 
deplored as implying an inferiority on the part of the 
Israelites, totally unmindful of the fact that the practice 
of material medicine originated with idolatrous nations, 
not with the worshippers of the one God. To assume, 
therefore, that the healing efficacy of a right apprehen- 
sion of Deity, supported by obedience to His command- 
ments, is inferior to a pagan device, or to a chemical or 
herbal product, is to exalt the miaterial above the spirit- 
ual, and to subordinate God in human esteem. When 
the Creator of all things became known to Israel as " the 
Lord that healeth thee," is it to be implied that He would 
be less skilful or successful than the physicians of Egypt? 
Or does this age impugn the wisdom of Moses and of 
the Israelites in accepting this covenant as providing the 
best means for maintaining or restoring their health? 
When David, long afterward, recognized God as One 
who "healeth all thy diseases," are we to assume that 
those who thus relied upon Him were placing their lives 
in jeopardy? or that He was less capable of exerting 
healing power than the physicians of the Gentiles? Is 
it possible that the standard of healing among the Is- 
raelites was below that of their image-worshipping 
neighbors, because they accepted this divine covenant 
of health? 



8o FOOTSTEPS OF ISRAEL 

We must remember that Israel was "a peculiar 
people " among the nations, not because her people were 
physically different, nor because they did not share with 
others the common feelings and failings of humanity, 
but because they acknowledged and worshipped God as 
One, and not as many. This, however, did not make them 
inferior to these other nations, but quite the contrary. 
They were certainly not to be condemned for refusing 
to conform to the ways of their idolatrous neighbors, 
since this is precisely what they were enjoined to do. 
We find that their troubles arose when they went after 
the " strange gods " of these same neighbors, and ceased 
to " hearken diligently " to the God of their fathers. It 
should not be thought strange that the Israelites adopted 
a mode of caring for their sick that was in conformity 
with their better ideal of Deity, but rather that that 
method should ever have been abandoned. 

We are following the course of Israel for the simple 
and sole reason that the highest spiritual thought of the 
age was always found in her, and because of this, Israel 
has ever been the medium of divine revelation. God, 
being Spirit, plainly reveals Himself through spiritual 
sense, not through the material; why, then, should not 
the omnipotence of good be more readily apprehended 
and applied through spiritual than through material 
means ? When Naaman the Syrian came to a prophet of 
Israel to be healed, it was not because there were no 
physicians in his own country. And when the healing 
was accomplished he did not say, " Now I know there 
are better physicians here than in my own land"; but 
" Now I know there is no God in all the earth, but in 
Israel." His experience unquestionably proved that 
there was a healing power in Israel that far surpassed 
the medical art of the Gentiles, no matter how much the 
materialistic commentator may deplore the inferiority of 
the Hebrews in that respect. 

The great point of interest for students of the 
Scriptures, looking eagerly towards Israel's approaching 
restoration, is this : when she emerges from her long 



THE COVENANTS IN THE WILDERNESS 8l 

oblivion to take her place among! the nations, and 
to be the same spiritual force as of old, where will she 
stand in relation to these early covenants, which were 
given when God was to her a living and tangible reality ? 
Will she, for instance, accept or repudiate this covenant 
of health, which was given to the Israelites after their 
wonderful deliverance from Egypt? Will she gladly 
acknowledge her former covenant, or will she say sub- 
stantially. We are too material in this stage of our 
history to depend upon God for our health? Would 
this be Israel, the spiritual line of the woman, God's pe- 
culiar people through whom all the families of the earth 
are to be blessed ? Will this be her position after the op- 
portunities of thousands of years to progress beyond the 
knowledge of Moses and the people of that early period? 
If this be so, one might well ask in what direction our 
faces are turned? 

Disappointing as it might seem, it is nevertheless 
true, that if Israel is today too absorbed in materialism 
to occupy the position she had reached thus early in her 
course, she is not ready to inherit the promise given to 
Abraham concerning his seed; for the essence of this 
promise is wholly spiritual, and its central purpose is 
to bless the nations. It is certain that if Israel is too 
spiritually impoverished to observe her covenants, then 
the " times of the Gentiles '' are not yet ended, all state- 
ments to the contrary notwithstanding. What it really 
amounts to is simply this: if there is not sufficient spirit- 
ual light in Israel to enable her to see that the Lord, as 
of old, is the real source of health to man, she has not 
reached the position of being blessed "above all people," 
for the conditions attached to all of the covenants were 
practically the same. It is very obvious that the resto- 
ration of Israel, if it means anything at all, must include 
the restoration of her former relationship to God in all 
that it meant in her early history, so that it could be said 
to her again, *' I am the Lord that healeth thee." 

The second covenant in the wilderness was announced 
at Sinai, and may be called the Covenant of Morals. 



82 FOOTSTEPS OF ISRAEL 

" And Moses went up unto God, and the Lord called unto 
him out of the mountain, saying, ... Ye have seen 
what I did unto the Egyptians, and how I bare 3^ou on 
eagles' wings, and brought 3^ou unto Myself. Now there- 
fore if ye will obey My voice indeed, and keep My cov- 
enant, then ye shall be a peculiar treasure unto Me above 
all people: . . . And all the people answered together, 
and said, All that the Lord hath spoken we will do." 
In what is known as the Ten Commandments, the Israel- 
ites were shown specifically what the divine law de- 
manded in its application to human life. In addition to 
this, the record contains a mass of detailed regulations, 
covering almost every conceivable misconduct in the re- 
lations of human beings, and which is usually referred 
to as the Mosaic law. These regulations, however, 
are not included in the Decalogue, which is a summary 
in ten definite statements of what men are not to do in 
order to maintain a right moral standard. 

The moral law, as interpreted and annunciated by 
Moses, was probably as far as that age w^as prepared to 
go in its recognition of God's requirements. As it 
was, to the superstitious and terrified sense of the Is- 
raelites, this law was declared amid thunder and light- 
ning, and accompanied by earthquake, fire and smoke. 
That this commotion symbolized the fears of the carnal 
mind, not the majesty of Jehovah, may be read in the 
clearer light of the New Testament. The writer of the 
Book of Hebrews contrasts the crude beliefs of that 
primitive period with the more enlightened and meta- 
physical ideals of the Christian era, albeit the relation of 
divinity to humanity remained unchanged. *'For ye 
are not come unto the mount that might be touched, and 
that burned with fire, nor unto blackness, and darkness, 
and tempest, . . . But ye are come unto mount Sion, and 
unto the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, 
and to an Innumerable company of angels." (12:18, 22. ) 

It is notable that this covenant of morals is the rec- 
ognized basis of civil and criminal law in all English- 
speaking countries. The first mandatory clause, "Thou 



THE COVENANTS IN THE WILDERNESS 83 

shalt have no other gods before Me," states the most 
profound truth of the inspired. Scriptures, namely, that 
God is One and All. To what extent this truth is un- 
derstood and accepted in the countries referred to, as 
the substance of all real law, it is difficult to say; but 
that this understanding and acceptance must come, and 
be the chief agency in individual and national progress 
and salvation, should need no argument in its support. 

While the highest apprehension of God's requirements 
in the Mosaic age was expressed in the Decalogue, their 
true import was well-nigh buried in their material inter- 
pretation and application. Although these laws were not 
perfect, they have been indispensable in the transitional 
journey of humanity towards the more spiritual meaning 
of divine law which is found in the teachings of Christ 
Jesus. In the harsher view of the earlier Israelites, it 
was believed that God was angry over mortals' trans- 
gressions of these laws, and that His anger could be 
placated only by punishment and sacrifice, a belief which 
is not yet entirely outgrown. 

This belief, that vengeance upon the wrongdoer is 
pleasing to God, was terribly exemplified on the occasion 
of Moses' descent from the mountain with the tables 
of the law, to find the Israelites worshipping a golden 
calf. Apparently feeling himself called upon to vindi- 
cate the divine vengeance, he commanded the Levites to 
go among the people and slay without discrimination. 
This act seems to have been accepted without protest 
as quite consistent with the nature of Deity. Such an 
occurrence in a Christian land today would be Inconceiv- 
able, not because God Is not the same as then, but because 
human thought has Improved. This fact Illustrates the 
progressive nature of divine revelation. It has been 
found that human experience largely corresponds to 
the thoughts which are entertained of God. To the 
untutored thought of these Hebrews, Deity possessed 
many of the qualities which they found In themselves. 
They thought of Him as a "man of war," moved to 
anger and revenge as they were, and dealing pitilessly 



84 FOOTSTEPS OF ISRAEL 

with the offender; but later in their history, thought 
had arisen to see Him as the " altogether lovely," as one 
who pitieth as a father and comforteth as a mother. 

This concept of God as the punisher of sinners fell 
short of the ideal presented by the Messiah, in which 
good destroys evil, not the evildoer; but it met the need 
of the cruder thought of that time, and helped to clear 
the way for a more rational and redemptive view of the 
Almighty. The covenant of the law was at that time 
the next step forward, but being imperfect it would 
sometime have to be superseded, a fact which Jesus in- 
dicated when he summed up the whole law as love for 
God and man. The lesser light of the law is naturally 
included in the larger light of the Gospel, therefore the 
Ten Commandments are still taught in Christian lands. 
The true Christian obeys the moral law because of his 
love of goodness, and has, therefore, outgrown its con- 
demnation; but Christianity, as a controlling spiritual 
force, has not yet taken its proper place, even in the 
countries of Christendom. Thus while the law of Sinai 
is superseded by the letter of Christianity, it still remains 
a very essential factor in the life of the world. 

Although Moses was naturally influenced by the super- 
stitious thought of his time, he towered above it like a 
mountain peak. One cannot read the record without being 
impressed with the fact that he possessed a very real and 
demonstrable knowledge of divine power, and with his 
steadfastness in fulfilling the great mission entrusted to 
him in the face of seemingly insurmountable difficulties. 
It is true that we find him, at one time, singing of God 
as a warrior chieftain triumphing in battle, but it was 
probably because he desired to contrast His almightiness 
with the impotence of the evil forces that opposed Him, 
and to do this in figures which the people could readily 
understand. And while he seems to have taken personal 
vengeance upon the people for their idolatry, it was 
doubtless prompted by jealousy for his God. There is 
no question that, far as his ideal may have been from 
that of Christianity, his knowledge of God was every- 



THE COVENANTS IN THE WILDERNESS 85 

thing to him; and because of this, because he was loyal 
and obedient to what he perceived of the God of Israel, 
he was able to prove His supremacy even to material 
sense. 

The covenants which were delivered to Israel in the 
wilderness journey, like the covenant which had been 
given to the fathers of the nation, were, without excep- 
tion, conditioned upon obedience to God. No covenant 
would be worth anything to humanity that rested on 
anything less. The very name Israel, applied to a people, 
naturally meant, in its original sense, the children of 
God, or the people to whom the true God was becoming 
known. This does not mean that God, at any time, re- 
vealed Himself personally to every individual in the 
nation, but that the nation represented a knowledge of 
God that was available to every person in it. Those 
who were faithful to the recognition of God's oneness 
were true Israelites, but those who failed to do this were 
not, for that very reason, identified w^th the real Israel, 
although they may have been, in a racial sense, classed 
as members of the nation. 

Thus we find that every covenant recorded in the 
Scriptures, which relates to man's relationship with 
God, is wholly conditional upon human thought and con- 
duct, a fact which becomes self-evident when one realizes 
the unchanging nature of Deity. God could present 
no other side to humanity at any time but His infinite 
goodness. As the writer of the book of Job pointed 
out, it can make no difference to God whether men do 
well or ill, although it makes every difference to men 
themselves. The man who makes good predominant in 
his thoughts will have a vastly better experience than 
the man who allows evil to be predominant therein, 3^et 
God stands in the same relation to both. It was the 
same with Israel and her covenants. They were opera- 
tive when the human conditions were fulfilled, but with- 
out this they were as dead letters. 

In announcing the covenant at Marah, Moses was 
giving utterance to a truth that applied not alone to the 



86 FOOTSTEPS OF ISRAEL 

Hebrews in the wilderness, but to all humanity, and for 
all time : a truth as old as the multiplication table, and as 
simple and certain in its operation. Those w^ho may 
have doubted the reliability of this compact were those 
who were not prepared to meet its requirements. As 
sure as God is God, and as sure as He is the same in all 
ages, no human ingenuity can devise a lasting or effective 
substitute for this divine source of health, any more 
than it can find a substitute for the multiplication table. 
In every age mortals have striven for means to evade 
the conditions of this covenant, but with only an ap- 
parent and transient success. The vanity of mortals, 
finding satisfaction in the flesh, seeks an alternative for 
goodness, but there is none to be found. If there were 
a real substitute for the health that results from obedi- 
ence to God, then His government and protection are 
proved unnecessary. 

In the covenant of Sinai, the first provision includes 
every condition divinely imposed upon man. The human 
transgression of this command has been illegitimately 
confined to the worship of heathen deities, such as pre- 
vailed at that time in the surrounding nations, and this 
may have been its immediate intent; but its more com- 
prehensive significance, understood as men have learned 
more of the nature of divinity, involves the conclusion 
that this one God, the " one good," is the All of true 
being, the sum total of reality. " Do not I fill heaven 
and earth, saith the Lord ? " 

It does not seem likely, however, that this larger view 
of Deity was perceived by the Israelites of that period, 
but it is certain that the consciousness of the patriarchs 
and prophets was lighted by flashes of this truth, and 
that these flashes of spiritual light came to them as rev- 
elations * from God ; else they would not have caught 
their wonderful visions of the final destruction of evil, 
and the coming of the undisputed reign of good upon 
the earth. Human consciousness was very slowly jour- 
neying towards the "light" which St. John declares is 
God; but it was then only the very early hours of the 



THE COVENANTS IN THE WILDERNESS 87 

morning, and there was a long way yet to be traversed. 
The end of the human journey will be the full realization 
of the infinitude of divinity, the all-inclusiveness of God 
and His creation, a realization w^hich Jesus possessed, 
and w^hich constitutes the transfiguring power of Chris- 
tianity. 



CHAPTER IX 
Proving the Word of the Lord 

Your fathers tempted Me, proved Me, and saw My 
works forty years. — Heb. 3 : 9. 

When thou passest through the waters, I will be with 
thee; and through the rivers, they shall not overflow 
thee; when thou walkest through the fire, thou shalt not 
be burned ; neither shall the flame kindle upon thee. 

For I am the Lord thy God, the Holy One of Israel, 
thy Saviour. — Isa. 43 : 2, 3. 

THE forty years consumed by the Israelites in their 
passage from Egypt to Canaan covers one of the 
most eventful periods in human history, not because 
of the magnitude of the undertaking in transporting this 
large host with all their belongings across a difficult coun- 
try, but because of the many palpable evidences of divine 
protection which accompanied them. It is a very simple 
matter for an individual or a nation to acknowledge be- 
lief in God, to establish forms of worship, to build tem- 
ples for religious uses, to conform to an elaborate ritual; 
but it is a long step from an outward and superficial ex- 
pression of religious belief, to a practical reliance upon 
divine power in time of need. The average religionist 
of today, for example, would be startled at the demand 
for a humanly tangible proof of the verity of the God 
of his creed, and of His protective and redemptive 
power. 

And yet looses did this, day in and day out, during 
forty years, for two or three million people, and in forms 
that the sceptic could not set aside as being incidental 
to the ordinary course of things. The spiritual mission 
of Israel, the necessity, in fact, for her existence, was 
to subdue and eventually destroy the carnal mind, and 
this would naturally involve experiences which might 
seem miraculous to that so-called mind, in that they 



PROVING THE WORD OF THE LORD 89 

would set aside its fixed beliefs of law and order. It 
should be self-evident on the face of things that a human 
being could not maintain a definite and prolonged spir- 
itual activity without meeting opposition from the fleshly 
sense, and the necessity in every such case would be 
either to conquer that opposition or submit to its claims. 
This fact, which is confirmed in individual experience, 
accounts for the many backslidings of the Israelites. 

As the leader of the children of Israel, taking them 
upon what may have seemed a venturesome enterprise, 
unaccustomed as they were to moral discipline, Moses 
was faced with the constant necessity of giving them 
definite evidence of the presence of their God to guide 
and deliver. It would have been not only useless, it 
would have been suicidal on more than one occasion, for 
Moses to have urged them to be satisfied with a pre- 
scribed religious belief, or with prayers to an unknown 
and distant Deity. It was at times a question of pre- 
serving their lives. When they came to Marah they 
found the water undrinkable, and that must needs be 
remedied. In the wilderness of Sin they found no means 
of subsistence, and the situation again seemed desperate. 
With the people clamoring for food, and with no visible 
supply at hand, what indeed, was Moses to do? The 
carnal mind argued that they would surely perish in 
that barren place, but, instead of despairing, Moses 
took the matter up with God. Was not the Lord the 
creator of the earth and the fulness thereof, and could 
He not sustain the Israelites where they were? 

And where no food seemed to be, it was not only 
provided in abundance, but the supply was maintained, 
so that they suffered not from hunger during their pro- 
longed wanderings. And where no water was, it was 
given them, more than once, from the rock. Thus signs 
were furnished them in plenty that the God of Israel 
was not a myth, or a far-off, inaccessible mystery, but 
a provable and present reality. And why not, since 
"the earth is full of the goodness of the Lord," and the 
goodness of the Lord is not made manifest in famine 



90 FOOTSTEPS OF ISRAEL 

of bread or of water or of any needful thing? Moses 
rose in spiritual thought to see that, because the suste- 
nance of life was spiritual, it was unlimited, as did Elisha 
and Jesus in after years; and his perception of this 
truth was sensibly manifested to the people in the supply 
of their need. If it is true that God is omnipresent, it 
must be possible at all times for mortals to realize His 
presence both humanly and divinely, that is to their 
physical as well as to their spiritual sense. These ex- 
periences in the wilderness should assure us that wher- 
ever the real Israel is today, there must be the proofs of 
God's presence as the Saviour of those who trust in Him. 
To discover Israel thus in these latter days is infinitely 
more important to humanity than the discovery of her 
national identity alone could possibly be. 

When Israel left her bondage in Egypt and began 
her journey to the land of Canaan, it was to prove the 
word of the Lord as it came, first to Abraham, and lastly 
to Moses. Her beginning as a separate people rested on 
the same foundation, and this purpose of her national 
life was never withdrawn, though it was lost sight of 
for long periods; but whenever she came to know her- 
self aright, it was always as God's instrument for mak- 
ing Himself known to men. Practically all of the books 
that have been written on the identity of modern Israel, 
although chiefly confined to the national or material 
phases of the question, are attempts to prove that the 
word of the Lord concerning her has worked out true. 
It is not logically possible, therefore, to separate Israel's 
career at any point from this specific and essential aspect 
of her existence, a fact which imparts a particular prom- 
inence to the existing force and effect of the covenants 
which have been given to her from time to time, and 
w^hich cover and include all the essentials of a nation's 
welfare and success. 

From her earliest history, when we must rely largely 
upon tradition for our information, to the time of her 
disappearance, it was a case of, "And the Lord said," 
or, ''Thus saith the Lord"; and all through their ex- 



PROVING THE WORD OF THE LORD 91 

periences, the Israelites knew that that word had never 
failed them. It was always verified in good to them 
when they themselves were true. Therefore when Moses 
announced in what manner their food would be supplied 
while they were in the barren country, or how their 
water would be forthcoming where the country was dry, 
it did not seem unduly strange, or inconsistent with their 
thought of Deity, that He should care for them in this 
eminently practical way. It had been proved to them, 
over and over, that the word of the Lord was certain 
and conclusive, and when the need arose, its potency 
was found to be more effective than any possible human 
agency. This, of course, may not have expressed the 
attitude of every individual Israelite, but it certainly did 
express the loyal thought of the nation, and the remem- 
brance of these things will simplify one's study of the 
history of this remarkable people, and will especially aid 
in determining the marks of her identity today as well as 
in days to come. 

To be sure, it has always been the aim and endeavor 
of the carnal mind to discount or discredit everything 
in the Scriptures that suggests the miraculous, or that 
has arisen of a like nature in subsequent human experi- 
ence. It has consistently, and often ingeniously, striven 
to account for the proofs' of divine power in human af- 
fairs on the basis of what it calls natural means, and has 
eagerly seized upon every circumstance that might lend 
color to a possible coincidence or accidence in explanation 
of God's care and protection over His people. It has dili- 
gently worked out an explanation of some of the plagues 
as having resulted from purely natural occurrences, and 
of which Moses cleverly took advantage to deceive the 
Egyptians. In the same way, it has found that Naaman 
recovered from his leprosy by bathing in the river Jor- 
dan, and that Jesus healed the blind man with a bit of 
mud. 

Confronted by the dread prospect of famine, the car- 
nal mind asked in derisive terror, " Can God furnish a 
table in the wilderness?" The material thousrht of the 



92 FOOTSTEPS OF ISRAEL 

Israelites taunted them with having left their Egyptian 
flesh-pots to perish of starvation, for how could they 
obtain food for their families in that desolate place? 
''And the Lord said, Behold I will rain bread from 
heaven for you," and He did so. What then became of 
the taunts of the carnal mind? On its own evidence it 
had been proved a false prophet and an unreliable wit- 
ness. And the story would be told long afterwards to 
their children, and passed on through the generations, of 
how this large host were fed from day to day, as it were 
by the very hand of God, when there were no visible 
means from which to draw. It was thus proved that 
there was in very deed a God in Israel. 

In this case also attempts have been made to show the 
absence of any superhuman agency, but, while it is 
claimed that a substance similar to the manna is found 
by the Arabs at a certain season of the year and under 
certain conditions, it is acknowledged that its continuous 
and abundant supply to the Israelites, and its absence 
on the Sabbath, must be attributed to divine power. It is 
not to be expected that the carnal element in human 
thought would willingly acknowledge the verity of spir- 
itual facts, or the supremacy of divine law, for ' this 
acknowledgment would be fatal to its dominion over 
mankind; but it is plainly this very element of sensualism 
which the advancing perception of spirituality must de- 
stroy before paradise can be regained. 

It is the recognition of such things as these which 
imparts a universal interest to the story of Israel, and 
links up the struggles of this early people with present- 
day problems and experiences, for to be positively as- 
sured of the verity of the divine Word is as vitally 
important now as then. The failure to realize that the 
goodness of God is ever at hand seems as apparent to- 
day as at any time in the past of our race. We cannot 
be said to have progressed so very far spiritually in ad- 
vance of the Israelites in the wilderness, when *'the 
cares of this world, the deceitfulness of riches, and the 
lust of other things " continue to prevent the Word from 



PROVING THE WORD OF THE LORD 93 

expressing- its living reality in our midst. Surely the 
long expected restoration of Israel must mean vastly 
more than a political event, occurring in fulfilment of 
prophecy; more than the recognition by a great people 
of its ancient ancestry. To be complete, it must be the 
resurrection to spiritual-mindedness, and a return to 
the days when it was considered the natural thing to 
prove the w^ords of the Lord, not as implying doubt, 
but as the expression and confirmation of faith in time 
of need. At the risk of undue repetition let it be said 
again, that it was only because there was proof in Israel 
that their God was above all the gods of the Gentiles, 
omnipotent in power to redeem from evil, that this 
people held God's covenant of blessing above the Ca- 
naanites or the Egyptians. 

It will appear more fully as we proceed that a discus- 
sion of the subject of Israel cannot rightly be separated 
from its spiritual aspect. Throughout the Old Testa- 
ment records we find that this nation prospered or failed 
according to its fidelity or infidelity to its highest concept 
of good, irrespective of external or so-called natural 
conditions. We know in all honesty that changes of 
time and circumstance do not exempt mortals from the 
demands of God. Although the outward face of things 
may change, and improved customs may replace the old, 
the connection between cause and effect, the nature of 
good and evil, and the commands of God, remain un- 
affected. The point in considering these things is this : 
before Israel can recover her lost position and identity, 
she will have to prove herself to be better than in former 
days, for the simple reason that the times of the Gentiles 
will not come to an end because of any arbitrary decree 
or the order of chronology, but because the thoughts of 
her people are returning to God. 

The proving of the word of the Lord, however, was 
not always a pleasant experience for the Israelites. 
God's word was verified as surely in their failures as in 
their successes, in their defeats as well as in their 
triumphs, since the condition necessary to their prosperity 



94 FOOTSTEPS OF ISRAEL 

had been plainly stated as obedience to His laws. This 
may be noted in connection with the covenant of health. 
Moses had announced the conditions under which their 
health would be maintained, but they repeatedly rebelled 
against the observance of those conditions, and suffered 
in consequence of their moral defection. Through their 
disobedience and rebellion they were slowly learning the 
absolute unchangeableness of the word of the Lord, and 
the consequent impossibility of ignoring it and remain- 
ing immune from suffering. The pestilence that befell 
the Israelites on more than one occasion did not disprove 
the covenant, but quite the reverse, since it was thereby 
shown that God's laws cannot be disregarded with im- 
punity. Our boards and councils of health could learn 
from this an invaluable lesson, and instead of inspiring 
people with fear of disease, and with the belief that 
health can be maintained without respect to moral con- 
ditions, should arouse them to the necessity of bettering 
their moral and spiritual status. It is the unqualified 
teaching of the Scriptures that health is inseparable 
from holiness, that is, purity of thought and conduct, 
and it is unfortunate that our modern health authorities 
are conspicuously silent upon this supremely essential 
point. 

The reason for touching on the relation of Israel to 
the question of health is that the Scriptures thus relate 
them, and that very intimately, so that the inner history 
of the Israelites and their prospective restoration can- 
not be reviewed without considering this aspect of their 
religious faith, and their recognition that God's help was 
available in all that entered into their human experience. 
Many works on the subject of Israel appear to largely 
if not entirely ignore this phase of her relation to God, 
and thus unwittingly confirm the arguments of the car- 
nal mind. This silence would be unaccountable were it 
not that the general thought, even of Christendom, is 
still held In the grasp of materialism, to the evil of which 
it has not yet fully awakened. In the covenant of health 
the relative positions of Israel and Egypt, alias the Gen- 



PROVING THE WORD OF THE LORD 95 

tiles, are clearly set forth on this particular subject, and 
it would be but a partial view of the situation that left 
untouched a point so intimately related to both spiritual 
and literal Israel, not only in that age, but in every age, 
until human salvation shall finally be accomplished. 

Israel, with its wealth of meaning, was not the out- 
come or the expression of a human theory, doctrine, or 
speculation. It did not rest upon the blind acceptance of 
any unproved proposition, or upon faith in an unknown 
or unknowable Deity. It grew out of something more 
tangible than the vagaries of human belief and supersti- 
tion, and that was upon logical and actual evidence, too 
conclusive to be smothered in a theory, and too satisfying 
to be put aside as problematical. It was a degree of per- 
sonal knowledge that assured Enoch, Noah, and Abraham 
of their relation to God and of His nearness to man. Faith 
they had, but it was born of communion, not of doctrine 
or education. They were too simple-hearted and open- 
minded, those old patriarchs, to be troubled over creedal 
definitions and sectarian differences. They lived nearer 
to the heart of things then. Artificiality in sentiment 
and superficiality in religious feeling were not the mental 
states that brought forth Israel, nor will Israel be 
brought back by any emotional makeshifts for spiritual- 
ity. It is impossible to compress the world-wide scope 
and purpose of Israel's existence within the limits of 
a self -centered nationalism, or to confine the liberating 
spirit of this divinely inspired movement within the 
deadening folds of materialism, either in religion or 
medicine. The word Israel means to rule with God, a 
meaning which is quite the antithesis of subjugating 
oneself to the dictates of the carnal mind, and accepting 
its decree that spiritual truth has no dominion over the 
physical or animal sense. 

Even Moses could not be induced to take a message 
of deliverance to the Hebrews in Egypt without some 
convincing token that he was telling them the truth. 
They must, naturally, have had some knowledge of the 
history of their beginning as a people, and of the ex- 



96 FOOTSTEPS OF ISRAEL 

traordinary intimacy which had existed between their 
fathers and the God of Israel ; and Moses was well aware 
that they would demand some proof that his communica- 
tion was authentic, and that his promise of deliverance 
was well founded and dependable. It does seem some- 
what remarkable that, in that supposedly credulous and 
superstitious age, they were more particular about dem- 
onstration than are the religionists of this more enlight- 
ened period, when the most amazingly contradictory 
theories about God are accepted without question. When 
the prophet Elijah restored her son to life, the widow of 
Zarephath said, " Now by this I know that thou art a 
man of God, and that the word of the Lord in thy mouth 
is truth." It should not be doubted that there will have 
to be a return to that primitive order of things before 
redemption will draw nigh to Israel, so that we also 
can say, Now I know, rather than. Now I believe. 

In our thought of Israel's restoration, there is need to 
guard against repeating the fatal mistake of the Jews 
who, in their mad desire to set up a worldly kingdom, 
missed the vision of the Messiah. Many estimable and 
able men have devoted much of their lives to the solution 
of the identity of Israel in the present age, and there 
seems to be a danger among those who are following 
up their work to allow the material and temporal side 
of this question to overshadow the spiritual. In the 
fulfilment of the prophecies concerning Israel, the chief 
end is not the possession of a great kingdom, nor the 
attainment of political power and material prosperity, 
but that the Christ shall come to light again through 
her, that is, come again to human recognition, not to be 
rejected, but to establish God's government in the earth. 

There was certainly no greater need for the Israelites, 
in their passage from Egypt to Canaan, from the land 
of bondage to the land of promise, to prove the truth of 
God's word, than there is for the Israel of today, con- 
fronted by different phases of the same enemy, in her 
emergence from an age-long captivity and obscurity to 
the re-possession of a new promised land, and her re- 



PROVING THE WORD OF THE LORD 97 

birth as the chosen of the Lord. As we look about us, 
what are we expecting to see as the real signs of her re- 
turn? Unless there is a faithful attempt to prove the 
word of the Lord, in the latter days as in the former 
days, how may Israel know that her God today is the 
God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob? 

The other side of this question was, of course, the 
proving of the Israelites themselves. The part set before 
them was to obey the voice of the Lord, and to walk in 
His statutes. While their attitude to God was that He 
should bless them with His presence and protection, they 
were not always as willing in return to render Him their 
entire allegiance. There are always two parties, at least, 
to a covenant, and it is naturally binding upon all alike, 
according to their position. Although the Israelites 
were but human beings, and far from being the children 
of God in the full meaning, there was a degree to which 
they could go in fulfilling the law of righteousness, and 
to that possible degree they were not exempt from God's 
demands. The proving of the Israelites, however, was 
not an ordeal set for special occasions, or for a special 
people, but was the demand which rests upon all men 
to express the best they know. This demand seemed to 
apply more especially to them only because they knew 
more of the nature of Deity. The apostle teaches that a 
man is judged by what he has, not by what he has not. 
Thus the law of morality, which seemed to be as high as 
human thought could go at that time in the way of 
understanding and obeying God, is the standard by which 
we must judge them, rather than by the enlightenment 
and experience of later years. 

The culminating test of the Israelites came when they 
approached the land which had been promised to them. 
One man from each tribe was chosen to spy out the coun- 
try and report as to its condition and the obstacles to be 
encountered in its invasion. Two only of these repre- 
sentatives reported favorably, namely, Joshua of the 
tribe of Ephraim, the personal sen^ant of Moses, and 
Caleb of the tribe of Judah. The others gave such an 



98 FOOTSTEPS OF ISRAEL 

evil report that the people then and there abandoned all 
thought of attempting the invasion. They mourned and 
wept for disappointment, and complained against the 
Lord for having brought them into such a plight. Joshua 
and Caleb pled with them in vain. They became so 
mentally paralyzed with fear that they forgot what God 
had done for them since Moses came to their rescue in 
Egypt, and they were now as anxious to return to their 
wretched bondage as they had been to be freed from it. 

But Moses knew that the word of the Lord could not 
be broken or set at naught by this rebellious people, 
notwithstanding that his- labor and sacrifice appeared to 
have been in vain. 

At God's direction he took them back into the wil- 
derness, there to prepare another generation to carry out 
this enterprise. After about thirty-nine years we find 
Moses, with this new body of Israelites, again approach- 
ing the land of Canaan ; but this time it was he who was 
not permitted to enter it. According to the record, he 
had transgressed in smiting the rock the second time 
to provide water for the people. His instructions were to 
" speak " unto the rock, but in his vexation over the re- 
bellion of the Israelites he allowed his human selfhood 
to becloud his duty to God. In other words, he had ex- 
alted himself instead of giving God the glory, and in his 
remorse he felt that he had lost his own right to enter 
the land. 

This incident cannot, of course, be regarded as im- 
plying that Moses was less worthy than the people under 
him. He naturally judged himself on the ground of his 
past knowledge and experience, and his self-condemna- 
tion was so complete that he doubted not it was the divine 
decree that he should not lead Israel into Canaan. So 
loyal was Moses to this conviction that, although in per- 
fect health and vigor, he meekly accepted what he be- 
lieved to be his just punishment, and retired unto the 
mountain to end his days. 

The writer of the closing chapter of Deuteronomy 
thus speaks of one whose influence was deep and lasting 



PROVING THE WORD OF THE LORD 99 

upon the history of his race: "And there arose not a 
prophet since in Israel hke unto Moses, whom the Lord 
knew face to face." The character of his thought is 
seen in his appeal that God might be with him in his 
leadership of Israel : " If Thy presence go not with me, 
carry us not up hence. For wherein shall it be known 
here that I and Thy people have found grace in Thy sight ? 
is it not in that Thou goest with us ? so shall we be sepa- 
rated, I and Thy people, from all the people that are 
upon the face of the earth." It was also written of him, 
and nothing could better describe his high qualities and 
attainment: *'The Lord spake unto Moses face to face, 
as a man speaketh unto his friend." 

Moses knew that Israel would mean nothing, and be 
nothing, without the presence of God, for only that reali- 
zation could separate her from evil. The answer to his 
appeal was that glorious promise, "My presence shall 
go with thee," a promise that must remain while Israel 
shall endure. If this great patriarch recognized, so early 
in the day, that their consciousness of the presence of 
the Lord could alone distinguish this people, how much 
more should we realize this as that day is drawing to a 
close, and seek to identify Israel, not by material signs 
alone, but by the satisfying manifestation of the pres- 
ence of God. 



CHAPTER X 

The Nation in the Making 

In the same day the Lord made a covenant with 
Abram, saying, Unto thy seed have I given this land, 
from the river of Egypt unto the great river, the river 
Euphrates. 

And I will give unto thee, and to thy seed after thee, 
the land wherein thcti art a stranger, all the land of 
Canaan, for an everlasting possession; and I will be 
their God. — Gen. 15 : i8 ; 17 : 8. 

Open ye the gates, that the righteous nation which 
keepeth the truth may enter in. — Isa. 26:2. 

A NYONE who has carefully followed the history of 
/A the Hebrews, up to the time of their last captivity, 
-^ -^ such as is furnished by their own imperfect chroni- 
cles, must be impressed with the discouraging prospect 
that they w^ould ever become, in very reality, the people of 
the Lord. It is natural to feel a sense of disappointment 
that a race which began so auspiciously, which produced 
so many shining lights, and bequeathed such a wealth of 
inspiring literature to the world, should apparently end 
its career so ignominious ly. The answer to that, of 
course, as anticipated and recorded by themselves, is that 
their career is by no means ended, and that the greatness 
and glory of Israel is yet to be made manifest. Upon 
the fulfilment of that expectation rests the veracity and 
value of much of the Old Testament writings, and 
therein also lies the interest which many feel in the re- 
lation of Scriptural prophecy to the present age. 

At the time of her sojourn in the wilderness, the na- 
tion of Israel was but an unformed, rude mass, waiting 
to be burned and hammered into shape by the terrible 
experiences through which she was to pass. When 
Moses took this people out of Egypt and led them safely 
to the borders of Canaan, he was no doubt persuaded of 



THE NATION IN THE MAKING loi 

their readiness and ability, under God's direction, to take 
possession of the land; but their utter failure even to 
make the attempt led him to see that a long time must 
elapse before the nation would be spiritually ready to 
receive the blessings which God had promised to the 
seed of Abraham. This appears to have been impressed 
upon him still more during their protracted wandering 
in the wilderness, in view of his many warnings and 
exhortations, and his expressed fears concerning their 
future. 

It becomes more evident as we proceed that we cannot 
judge this people altogether by the ordinary standing of 
nations, either of their time or ours, for from the begin- 
ning they constituted a class by themselves. /There was 
something about this race which preserved it from sink- 
ing wholly to the moral level of the surrounding nations, 
and which is destined to bring them into their proper place 
and recognition, and that is, that through it runs the 
line of "the woman"; although a very thin line it has 
seemed to be as we follow its course, at times disappear- 
ing altogether, but always reappearing. And like the 
famous '' thin red line " of the British armies, it has with- 
stood all the efforts of the enemy to break through and 
destroy Israel. The selection of the descendants of 
Abraham, through Isaac and Jacob, to become a separate 
nation, was undoubtedly to provide a refuge for the spir- 
itual seed of the woman, and the opportunity for its de- 
velopment and increase, so that through it all mankind 
might eventually be redeemed. 

Thus the real significance of Israel, used as a title 
rather than a name, is found to be the spiritual conquest 
of the carnal mind, a conquest that must necessarily be 
fought out on the recognition that man is in reality the 
son of God, and not a creature of the earth, earthy. A 
practical knowledge of this original and unchanging 
truth of creation is all that can effectually bruise the 
head of the serpent, and unfold the fact of their real 
divinity to the spiritual consciousness of men. But to 
ascribe divine qualities to the human race of Israel, or 



102 FOOTSTEPS OF ISRAEL 

to assume that they were as mortals the children of God, 
is not warranted in the Scriptures, and subjects the hu- 
man to a demand it is obviously unable to meet. The 
Israelites in the flesh were the same as all other mortals. 
It was the higher thought of Abraham, his spiritual per- 
ception of being, spoken of in the Scriptures as the seed 
of the woman, that made Israel Israel; and it was this 
spiritual sense of God and man that constituted her 
peculiarity in contrast with other races, and her only 
means of blessing herself and others. When the Israel 
of Spirit was in the ascendancy, when the nation recog- 
nized God for what He is and was faithful thereto, she 
was invariably prosperous and safe; when she did not 
do this, she was overcome by her enemies, and evil in- 
vaded her land. This shows precisely the relation to 
each other of spiritual and national Israel. 

It is certain that nothing can result but disappoint- 
ment if we look to the Hebrews, as a group of mortals, 
to find the good things which are spoken of Israel; for 
the good which human thought is spiritually capable of 
perceiving is not within but outside of itself. What 
Abraham and others gained such glorious glimpses of, 
was not derived from the human consciousness, but from 
the Divine. Therefore whatever of the truth about God 
which was perceived in Israel, through the exalted 
thought of her patriarchs and prophets, was not her pri- 
vate possession, and strengthened and enriched her na- 
tional existence only as this truth governed their 
thoughts and lives. The human side of Israel was like 
the glass which admits light but is not the light. When 
there ceased to be any transparency through which it 
could appear, the divine glory was obscured to human 
sense, and at these times Israel felt that the Lord had for- 
saken her. When their sense of God's presence was thus 
beclouded, through their wickedness and idolatry, the 
Israelites were in the same spiritual darkness as their 
neighbors, and could claim no protection on account of 
being in the flesh the children of Abraham. The Ish- 
maelites and the Edomites, when it comes to that, were 



I 



THE NATION IN THE MAKING 103 

also in the flesh the children of Abraham. When the He- 
brews gave themselves over to the worship of strange 
gods, they quickly discovered that the God of Israel 
made no discrimination between the person of an Israel- 
ite and the person of a Gentile. 

The fidelity to God which was characteristic of Abra- 
ham does not come to a people by inheritance. It was 
not to be reasonably expected that the nation of Israel 
would be made up of Abrahams, Isaacs, and Jacobs, 
or that it would comprise a body of men of the type of 
Moses. 

While the great Lawgiver had gone so close to God in 
consciousness that the divine glory shone wondrously 
upon the nation, it is apparent that the sensual element 
was dominant in the great mass of the people, and that 
it was vain to look for their immediate transformation. 
One has but to consider how painfully slow has been the 
evangelization of the so-called Christian nations, in order 
to understand the spiritual inertia of national Israel 
and the sluggishness of her upward movement. 

It is a mistake, therefore, to demand great things of 
the Israelites at this time. Taking into account the aver- 
age lifetime of nations, this people were but in their in- 
fancy. We have seen how Moses had to coax and coddle 
them like children, and correct them for their wayward- 
ness, ever since he brought them out of Egypt. They 
had increased in a strange land until they were a numer- 
ous people, but they had no national home, no national 
government or laws to whose restraint they might have 
grown accustomed from childhood; and upon the top of 
all this came the crushing weight of their serfdom to the 
Egyptians. Apart from the fact of a common lineage, 
all that seemed to bind them together were their religious 
traditions, in which was preserved the prophecy made to 
Abraham that his seed would be in bondage in a strange 
land, and that "afterward shall they come out with 
great substance." This no doubt kept alive their hope, 
and prepared them to some extent for the mission of 
Moses ; but it does not appear from the record that they 



104 FOOTSTEPS OF ISRAEL 

had developed to any appreciable degree the qualities 
which had distinguished the fathers of their race. 

Out of this unformed mass Moses patiently evolved 
some definite form of organic unity, in which God was 
acknowledged to be the chief Head and supreme Judge. 
He worked out for them a well-defined order of govern- 
ment and a code of civil and religious laws by which 
their affairs were to be regulated, not only as they ap- 
plied to their nomadic life in the wilderness, but when 
they were to be finally settled in Canaan. Every contin- 
gency in family and public life, in social and business 
relations, was provided for, with the details of enforce- 
ment, the agrarian laws being particularly wise in fore- 
stalling the possibility of the country becoming absorbed 
by large landholders. It was a confederation of twelve 
separate states or republics, held together by a commu- 
nity of religion rather than of race or w^orldly interest. 

While the Israelites were awaiting the proper time 
for the invasion of Canaan, Moses diligently impressed 
upon them the imperative necessity of obeying God's 
laws. He set before them in plain and graphic language 
the blessings which would be theirs if they remained 
faithful to the service of God: prosperity, health, and 
safety would attend them wherever they might be. In 
even more forceful and vivid language he pictured the 
reversal of these blessings if they disobeyed the word 
of God: disease, misfortune, famine, defeat, were to be 
their lot. It was not because of chance or accident that 
these evils were to come upon them, but as the direct re- 
sult of serving more than one God. 

The remarkable series of lessons, appeals, and admon- 
itions which are recorded in the book of Deuteronomy 
give evidence of the nature of the material Moses had 
to work with in his efforts to mould a nation for the serv- 
ice of God. If Jesus so many centuries later could 
call the Jews a wicked and adulterous generation, one can 
readily appreciate the disappointments and difficulties 
which beset the great Lawgiver. The making of the 
Israelites into a nation fitted for God's purposes involved 



THE NATION IN THE MAKING 105 

a greater task than delivering- them from Egypt. The 
salvation of this nation, who were called to be God's 
people, meant something far more than the conquest of 
a small country or the setting up of a model common- 
wealth. It meant the conquest of more stubborn enemies 
than any to be found within the borders of Canaan, and 
these enemies were their own evil thoughts. 

It was the essential destiny of Israel to belong to God 
alone : no other king and no other god were to be found 
there. " Thou shalt have no other gods before me " was 
to be the keynote of her religion and the foundation of 
her national existence. This truth alone contained the 
secret that was to make Israel a "peculiar treasure" 
above all people. It signified that the true Israelite was 
not to share his thoughts with evil, nor bow down to the 
lusts of the flesh. To him there could be but one God, 
one good, while evil, in all its seductiveness, was not 
something to be obeyed but unbelieved : that is, the claims 
of whatever would seek to usurp God's place were to be 
utterly repudiated. History records the continuous fail- 
ure of the Israelites to be even approximately true to this 
divine command, nor does the history of the Christian 
nations, with all their accrued privilege, add greatly to 
the page. But the fact necessarily remains, struggle as 
mortals may to evade it, that the only road to the 
Heavenly City lies through the truth expressed in this 
First Commandment, announced to Israel at Sinai and 
later confirmed by the great Teacher of Christianity. 

Moses' straightforward appeal to Israel to be loyal to 
her God has lost none of its force in the hundred or more 
generations which have since followed. His fine analysis 
of human perversity is equally pertinent to our own age, 
so slow has been the transforming process in human con- 
sciousness. The long road that stretched from Eden to 
Sinai, and that there widened out in its onward course, 
is not yet within sight of the end. All the hammering 
and burning endured by the sons of Jacob in their times 
of sore travail has not cleared their vision to behold 
the son of God ; and until this is accomplished, until Israel 



io6 FOOTSTEPS OF ISRAEL 

is purified of her earthliness, these refining fires will 
not be extinguished. The God who said to Abraham, 
" Walk before Me, and be thou perfect," could never ac- 
knowledge less than His own likeness as the model for 
His people. It is the carnal mind which complains of 
this demand, which attempts to evade the First Com- 
mandment, and claims the right to enter heaven without 
self-sacrifice. We must think of Israel, therefore, in our 
own day also, as still in the making, and cease looking 
to sensual mortals for the impress of the divine idea. 

In pronouncing his farewell blessing upon the children 
of Israel (Deut. 33), Moses, like Jacob, was thinking of 
far distant days rather than of the immediate future. His 
language is somewhat less mystical than Jacob's and he 
dwells with more kindliness on the qualities of some of 
the tribes. On this occasion, also, Joseph received the 
highest honor. It is particularly noteworthy that instead 
of blessing Ephraim and Manasseh as separate tribes, he, 
like Jacob, unites them in the house of Joseph, distin- 
guishing between them only in point of numbers. As he 
saw it, they were to share the same blessing and work out 
a common destiny. 

" His glory," he said of Joseph, " is like the firstling 
of his bullock"; in other words, the most excellent 
among the bullocks. The Avriters of the Old Testament, 
true to the Oriental mind, delighted in symbols and meta- 
phors which are not always clear to the modern reader. 
In this passage the bull is symbolic of great strength and 
power; literally it meant the "strong one." This phrase 
would seem to refer mainly to the political power and 
financial strength of Joseph as the representative nation 
of Israel, and naturally indicated a time when the Israel- 
ites would be out of Canaan and fill a larger place in the 
world's aflfairs than they could possibly do in that small 
country. 

" And his Horns are like the horns of unicorns : with 
them he shall push the people together to the ends of the 
earth." In the line of S3niibolism this would seem to refer 
to the spiritual standing of Joseph among the nations. It 



THE NATION IN THE MAKING 107 

is claimed that the translation here is faulty, there being 
no such animal as a unicorn except in ancient mythology. 
In the Revised Version this word is rendered '* wild ox," 
but this does not improve such a passage as Psalms 
92 : 10, which reads, in that version, " My horn hast Thou 
exalted like the horn of the wild-ox," since there is no 
such animal as a one-homed wild-ox, and such a ren- 
dering entirely robs this fine passage of its meaning. 
Notwithstanding the opinion of scholars it seems very 
probable that the Hebrew writers had the unicorn in 
mind, mythical though it may have been, and that it con- 
veyed a distinct meaning to them. 

In the Old Testament the word horn is a symbol of 
power, conquest, dominion, kingdom, etc., according to 
the connection in which it is used. Here it seems to com- 
bine all of these meanings, and points to the far-reaching 
spiritual influence of the house of Joseph. In Harold 
Bayley's Lost Language of Symbolism it is said that the 
unicorn was the ancient crest of the kings of Israel, and 
that its horn typifies " the sword or Word of God." He 
also quotes an ancient Chinese tradition, probably de- 
rived from the Hebrews, in which the unicorn represents 
" the Alone, the powerful One, or the one God." These 
facts immediately invest the use of this word with a 
significance which anyone can apply for himself. All 
this, of course, happened before exception was taken to 
the use of this word, before the translation itself existed, 
so that we may well suppose the translators of the King 
James Version had sufficient reason for thus rendering 
these passages. Unfortunately the scholar and the higher 
critic are sometimes so absorbed with externals as to en- 
tirely miss the inner meaning. 

If the house of Joseph is ever to fulfil the vision of 
Jacob and of Moses, it will surely have to be by her fidel- 
ity to the word of God. " The Alone, the powerful One, 
or the one God " certainly points to the opening command 
of the Decalogue, and the basic truth of the entire Scrip- 
tures. What else could make the house of Joseph great, 
and give her the chief place of honor among the nations, 



io8 FOOTSTEPS OF ISRAEL 

but her faithful recognition of the one God? What could 
exalt her horn, her power and dominion over evil, ex- 
cept her use, her demonstration, of the divine Word? 
What clearer interpretation of the ultimate spiritual tri- 
umph of Israel is there than this : "Not by might, nor 
by power, but by My spirit, saith the Lord"? Not by 
material might or political power shall Israel reach her 
high destiny, but by her spiritual understanding of the 
Word of God. 

This is what St. Paul calls " the sword of the Spirit," 
and it is with this spiritual weapon, not with bayonets 
and guns, that Israel is to " push the people together to 
the ends of the earth." This clearly does not mean ex- 
termination, but their conquest through the blessing 
promised in the covenant with Abraham. The Gentile 
nations, those who are spiritually outside of Israel, are 
to be pushed to the end of their idolatry, to the end of 
their materialism, by the power of the Word demon- 
strated. That is, in the end they will become Israelites, 
and fulfil the prophecy of Isaiah that all nations will 
come to worship the Lord in Zion. May it not be more 
than a coincidence that the greatest power among the 
nations today, namely Great Britain, and no other, has 
the unicorn on her crest or coat of arms? and that the 
two great branches of the English-speaking race have 
literally scattered the Bible to the ends of the earth and 
among all nations? The next step will naturally be to 
follow this up with the proof of its spiritual power, that 
is, to carry the " signs " to the people in Egypt. 

To quote again from Mr. Bayley's work : " In early 
Christian and pre-Christian times, the symbol of purity 
was the Unicom," and as such we are told, it was fre- 
quently used as a trade mark by paper makers. " Among 
the Puritan paper makers and printers of the Middle 
Ages," says this writer, " the unicorn served obviously as 
an emblem, not of material, but of moral purity." This 
most effectually disposes of the opinion of the scholarly 
critics that the word unicorn was not a proper transla- 
tion. What truly satisfying; meaning could one get 



THE NATION IN THE MAKING 109 

from the statement that Joseph would " push the people " 
with ''the honis of the wild-ox," or "wild-antelope" as 
some prefer ? Surely the translators of the King James 
Version proved their wisdom, for they have given us 
a rendering of deepest meaning and exquisite beauty, 
and considered in the light of its symbolic significance, 
it is the only rendering that could properly fit the case. 
Moral purity is a surer mark of greatness than is political 
prestige, and not only Israel but all the nations must 
sometime take this to heart if they would learn the lesson 
of past ages and avoid their toll of suffering. 

Thus the symbol of the unicorn, as the representation 
of moral purity, has a basic meaning and importance that 
continue along the whole line of Israel. This figure 
plainly stands for oneness. It means that good is unity 
and not mixture. It brings us again to Jesus' teaching 
that there is but one good, and this good, being spiritual, 
includes no materiality. The attempted mixture in man 
of the material and the spiritual, or of both good and 
evil, is not purity but adulteration. The making of Israel 
means the purifying of Israel, the clearing out of those 
adulterous qualities that were ever going after strange 
gods, strange men, and strange women, that is after the 
ungodlike. This was the adultery of Eden, that claimed 
to blend evil with good, the sensual with the spiritual, 
and to call it the God-created man; and it is the same 
subtle falsity that runs through all the idolatry of past 
and present. 

The one God of the law accepted by Israel must be the 
foundation of her whole national life, if that nation is to 
endure and take her appointed place in God's plan. And 
this accepted law of oneness means, and can only mean, 
purity in all things, or unadulterated goodness. The one 
power indicated by the horn of the unicorn stands for the 
government of good alone, the kingdom of righteous- 
ness, in which evil is neither acknowledged nor obeyed. 
It stands for freedom from foreign elements, that is, 
freedom from what is meant by Gentile dominion. The 
house of Joseph, the representative of Israel in the latter 



no FOOTSTEPS OF ISRAEL 

days, must recognize this, and let it control her councils, 
impel her development, and inspire her administration. 
For what nation, fearing God, worshipping Him as the 
" all-powerful One," could aspire to the possession of an 
authority or an influence that is not wholly good ! 

The presence of the unicorn on the coat of arms of 
Great Britain today is a perpetual and prophetic challenge 
to that nation to lay hold of its ancient significance, and 
examine her attitude to the God of her fathers and to 
the covenants long since made with His people. The 
hands on the dial of destiny have moved so far forward 
that it is not too early to do this, and to take an inventory 
of things as they are, and have been, and of what they 
must be. 



CHAPTER XI 
The Covenant of Possession 

Ever}^ place that the sole of your foot shall tread 
upon, that have I given unto you, as I said unto Moses. 
— Josh, i : 3. 

For if ye thoroughly amend your ways and your do- 
ings ; if ye thoroughly execute judgment between a man 
and his neighbour ; 

If ye oppress not the stranger, the fatherless, and 
the widow, and shed not innocent blood in this place, 
neither walk after other gods to your hurt : 

Then will I cause you to dwell in this place, in the 
land that I gave to your fathers, for ever and ever, — 
Jer. 7 : 5-7. 

IT is recorded that ^vhen Abraham left his father's 
house and came into Canaan the Lord said unto him, 
" Unto thy seed will I give this land." After his sepa- 
ration from Lot the promise was repeated : *' Lift up now 
thine eyes, and look from the place where thou art north- 
ward, and southward, and eastward, and westward: for 
all the land which thou seest, to thee will I give it, and 
to thy seed for ever." It thus came to be known as the 
Promised Land, sacred to Israel as her God-provided 
heritage, and because of the promises which still cluster 
around it. Now that this land has been freed from the 
grasp of Turkey (Edom), the eyes of both Jewry and 
Christendom are centered upon it. Jesus said, " Jerusalem 
shall be trodden down of the Gentiles, until the times of 
the Gentiles be fulfilled," and men are asking each other 
if that time has not come. Are the promises, repeated 
again and again to the patriarchs and prophets of Israel, 
about to be redeemed? Will Israel and Judah, as long 
foretold, again become one nation and together acknowl- 
edge the government of God? 

Abraham received this promise at a time when he was 
without home or country which he could call his own. 



112 FOOTSTEPS OF ISRAEL 

when he had come out from his own kindred "unto a 
land that I will shew thee," and he was naturally expect- 
ing some direction as to his new abode. The inspired con- 
viction that all the land where he then was would be the 
inheritance of his family came to his thought as a cov- 
enant from God, and he accepted it without question. 
To leave his ancestral home to become a waif and a 
wanderer was not God's reward for his unquestioning 
obedience, and we need feel no doubt that wisdom led 
him to regard this land as God's gift to himself and to 
his race. 

At the time of the great famine, Jacob and his family 
left Canaan and became domiciled in Egypt, whence his 
descendants were taken by Moses about four hundred 
years later; and they were now about to claim possession 
of the land which had been promised to Abraham, and 
which they had doubtless continued to regard as the 
rightful home of Israel. Since "the earth is the Lord's," 
one portion can be no more sacred than another, but to 
the human sense of the Israelites the right to possess and 
occupy this particular country was practically incorpo- 
rated in their religion. That God desired this people to 
inhabit the land of Canaan was as certain to Moses as 
that God had directed him to deliver them from their 
bondage and lead them hither. 

Moses had rehearsed in detail the part which the Israel- 
ites were to play when they entered the land of Canaan. 
He made no attempt to minimize the difficulties they 
would encounter, nor the fierce nature of the people with 
whom they would have to contend. He did not en- 
courage them to believe that God would do their work 
for them. Moses had declared, it is true, that God would 
cause their enemies to flee before them, but that was only 
in the event of their being obedient to His commands. 
The substance of their instructions, in addition to expel- 
ling the present inhabitants, was to destroy all traces of 
idolatry throughout the whole land, that their recognition 
of the true God be not turned aside or defiled, all of 
which is plainly metaphysical in its inner meaning and 



THE COVENANT OF POSSESSION 113 

application. *'An idol," Paul said to the Corinthians, 
" is nothing in the world." The altars, groves and 
images were but so much mindless matter, and in them- 
selves were neither good nor bad; so that the command 
chiefly concerned the thoughts of the Israelites them- 
selves. The ascent or improvement of human conscious- 
ness necessarily involved the casting out of evil, the 
overthrowing of the altars upon which it had sacrificed to 
its own passions, the breaking down of the mental images 
which inverted the divine qualities in man, and exalted 
evil in the name of good. In short, what was required 
of them in proof of their honesty was to put all un- 
righteousness out of themselves and obey good alone, 
which must naturally be the consummation of all true 
religion. 

The chief object in providing a national home for the 
Israelites implied something more important than ma- 
terial ease and plenty, and that plainly was that they 
might there develop unhindered the pure worship of the 
one God, which could not be so easily accomplished in a 
land of mixed races and ideals. This would seem to be 
the only logical reason for driving out the inhabitants of 
Canaan, and removing everything which might suggest 
false gods. That the failure fully to carry out the pre- 
scribed conditions of conquest would eventually lead to 
a compromise with the carnal mind, and so defeat the 
very purpose of possessing the land at all, is apparent at 
a glance, and confirms the wisdom, if not the means, of 
obtaining complete and undisputed occupancy. 

Moses, however, appeared to have little confidence that 
the Israelites would follow his counsel, and made no at- 
tempt to conceal his belief that in the end they would 
become morally recreant and give themselves over to 
evil practices. While he does not exclude the possi- 
bility that they may be faithful and obedient, the plain 
inference is that they will join themselves to the wicked- 
ness of their enemies, and be lured into the depths of 
national perdition. The wisdom of thus impressing his 
forebodings upon the thought of the Israelites is decid- 



114 FOOTSTEPS OE ISRAEL 

edly open to question, since the anticipation of evil cer- 
tainly has the tendency to bring it to pass. Having the 
forecast of their wrong doings handed down in their tra- 
ditions and entered in their records, keeping it before the 
thought of themselves and their children, would bid fair 
to weaken their moral resistance and aid in bringing 
about their downfall. 

It was the superstitious belief in those days, as it still 
is to some extent, that God dispenses evil as well as good 
to men, and Moses may have felt that the proper thing 
was to acquaint the Israelites with the evils which he be- 
lieved were to come upon them, and to do this in the name 
of the Lord; but in the clearer light of Christianity, God 
is seen to be alike incapable of imparting evil or of ac- 
knowledging a power besides good. Predictions of evil, 
therefore, are not divinely inspired, except as they relate 
to its self-destruction as the necessary corollary of human 
progress. Notwithstanding the proclamation at Sinai of 
the First Commandment, Israel had not yet awakened to 
see that, as the acknowledgment of evil was the acknowl- 
edgment of a power besides God, it was identical with 
idolatry. 

Because of their idolatrous materialism, the Israelites 
were to be eventually expelled from their own land, re- 
gardless of the promise to Abraham, and be dispersed 
among the nations of the earth; but the silver lining to 
Moses' gloomy forebodings is found in the covenant de- 
livered to the Israelites while they were in the plains of 
Moab, and which related to their occupancy and posses- 
sion of Canaan. Even though the nation of Israel should 
depart from the true God, the promise was that she would 
certainly return to her allegiance, and fill the place which 
had been assigned to her. 

Israel's future is here touched upon only in general 
terms. The chief points in this covenant are: (i) Is- 
rael would not retain the possession of this land unless 
she fully executed her part of the covenant. She could 
not expect her lapses of disobedience to be passed over, 
or her periods of forgetfulness to be condoned. The re- 



THE COVENANT OF POSSESSION 115 

suit of playing fast and loose with the Almighty would 
be certain banishment from Canaan to endure her punish- 
ment among the Gentiles. (2) In this period of her 
second exile, she would awaken to her position and 
return to the service of God. (3) When she recov- 
ered the consciousness of her true relation to God she 
w^ould be released fa'om her captivity, restored to her an- 
cient possessions, and receive the blessings which had been 
promised. History has verified the fulfilment of the first 
condition, and if the Scriptures are true the second must 
now be in the process of realization. The question of 
intense interest then is. How near may be the third ? 

The terms of this covenant should effectually dispose 
of the sentimental belief that God forgives sin without 
reformation. The Israelites were to be held as strictly to 
the actual performance of their part as God was looked 
to to perform His. It was a question of being true or 
untrue to their knowledge of God's laws, of being right- 
eous or unrighteous. Hence the Promised Land signified 
more to this people than a mere place of habitation or a 
source of subsistence; its possession stood, and will so 
stand to the end of their history, as the token of their loy- 
alty to God and of His presence with them. Wherever 
Israel is there will be found an affection for the land of 
Canaan, or Palestine as it is now called, different from that 
felt for any other portion of the globe ; not alone because 
it was the birthplace of Christianity, but because it was 
the homeland of her national childhood, the land where 
God revealed Himself to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, 
and about which cluster the associations of her sacred 
writings. 

The time had now come for Israel to enter this land 
for the first time as a distinct race. Joshua of the tribe 
of Ephraim, of whom it had been said, " he shall cause 
Israel to inherit it," had been selected to succeed Moses 
as leader of Israel. And never was land invaded in such 
strange fashion. It presented the appearance of a re- 
ligious pilgrimage rather than a military campaign, and a 
religious pilgrimage in reality it was, whose beginning 



ii6 FOOTSTEPS OF ISRAEL 

dated back to the first Passover feast in Egypt. And 
never was river forded by an army in such strange man- 
ner as 'the Jordan was that day. When the feet of the 
priests bearing the ark touched the water the river parted, 
and remained thus until the Israelites were safely across, 
although it was the flood time of year. Again they had 
abundantly proved the word of the Lord as given in the 
third sign to Moses, namely, that man, when governed 
by the Spirit of God, has dominion over so-called physi- 
cal laws. 

The first move of Joshua was to subdue the city of 
Jericho, and it is highly significant that he was instructed 
to conquer this city by mental instead of military means. 
Not by battering rams or engines of war, but by the 
united thought of the Israelites were the walls of Jericho 
cast down, recalling the words of the great Prophet of 
Israel, that if one had faith he could say "unto this 
mountain, Remove hence to yonder place ; and it shall re- 
move." It was the conquest of material resistance by the 
power of right thought. Israel had thus entered the 
Promised Land through spiritual ascendancy, and it is a 
logical inference that she will realize her restoration in 
the same way. It will not be by material might, physical 
force against physical force, but by reason of her spirit- 
ual conquests, that Israel will come to know herself again 
as God's chosen people, chosen, that is, to bear the lamp 
of spiritual illumination to the world. 

But when Israel reenters the Promised Land in the 
latter days, it will not be as the slayer of women and chil- 
dren, nor as the wanton destroyer of men and cattle, for 
they read the word of the Lord differently in these days. 
Both Moses and Joshua misinterpreted the divine will 
concerning the people of Canaan. It seemed that they 
could conceive of no other way to possess the land except 
by destroying the inhabitants, a course evidently in keep- 
ing with the customs of the times, and which does not 
appear to have impressed the Israelites as Inconsistent 
with the character of Jehovah. Naturally we must judge 
them by the standards of their age rather than of our 



THE COVENANT OF POSSESSION 117 

own, although it is not so very long since human life has 
been assessed at a much higher valuation than that which 
obtained during the conquest of Canaan. 

The modern student reads with horror of the outrages 
perpetrated by the victorious Israelites, as they supposed 
at the command of the Lord, but it is questionable 
w^hether even the better nations of today are as far in ad- 
vance of these people as we have fondly believed, when 
we remember that the cruelty of selfish indifference is 
not greatly removed from the cruelty of perpetration. 
When the great Anglo-Saxon race can witness for a gen- 
eration the deliberate and unspeakable outrages which 
Turkey has inflicted upon the innocent Armenians, in 
contrast with w^hich the Israelites' treatment of the Ca- 
naanites was tender mercy; when our enlightened and 
Christian governments stand blandly on one side while 
these outrages continue, without more than formal pro- 
tests, without lifting a finger to suppress them, any criti- 
cism on our part of what the Israelites did in Canaan 
were as well left unsaid. 

One thing we do know, that Israel does not make war 
that way today, although the nature of Deity has not 
changed, nor have His commands been altered ; therefore 
we may know that the slaughter of the people of Canaan 
was not divinely inspired. The divine Spirit never 
prompted the doing of evil, and never sanctioned the mis- 
deeds of Israel, albeit the leaders thereof regarded their 
course as authorized by God, and notwithstanding that 
the writers of the Old Testament have so recorded It. The 
absolute proof against It Is in the nature of God Himself. 
The bloody course pursued by the Israelites simply 
proved how finite and human was their concept of Deity, 
and how little they really understood of the divine 
nature. 

Such affirmations as "The Lord said," can be true 
only of that which, If obeyed, would promote the activity 
of goodness, of that which would result In blessing to 
others as well as to the Israelites themselves. Whatever 
else has been recorded as God's command was but the 



Ii8 FOOTSTEPS OF ISRAEL 

outgrowth of human belief and superstition. The God 
of Israel, as we know Him today, was not behind the an- 
nihilation of the people of Jericho, or behind the other 
pitiless massacres which attended the conquest of this 
land. To the power that made a way for the Israelites 
through the Red Sea, that fed them forty years in the 
wilderness, that gave them water from the rock, there 
must have been a more humane means of removing the 
Canaanites from the land than by killing them. And 
there was, if Joshua and the people had been prepared to 
see it. The command to have no mercy or pity upon the 
women and children of the cities which they conquered 
could not possibly emanate from Him who is the giver 
and preserver of life. It is absolutely futile, therefore, 
to attempt the reconciliation of these things with the will 
of God concerning Israel's entrance into Canaan. It is 
better to see these misdeeds for what they were — the 
outcome of that crude misconception of Deity on the part 
of the early Israelites which led them to believe they were 
the only people in the world whom He cared for, and that 
He approved the utter extermination of those nations 
which disputed their possession of this land. 

The children of Israel made the too common mistake 
of regarding their enemies as human beings, instead of 
as the enmity to good which existed in their own 
thoughts, a mistake which the Master rebuked in direct- 
ing his followers to love their enemies and to do them 
good. While it may not seem possible, even at this late 
date, to adjust human differences entirely on that basis, 
to the prevention of all national wars, the case of the Is- 
raelites was radically different. They had been brought 
from Egypt, as was believed, at God's direct command, 
land were to obtain possession of this land under divine 
guidance and protection. It was not a war of defence on 
their part, but of direct invasion, entirely unprovoked 
by the Canaanites, and justified only by the belief that 
this land had been bestowed upon them by God, a belief 
which, of itself, should have removed all occasion or ex- 
cuse for improper conduct. 



THE COVENANT OF POSSESSION iig 

Under divine providence there must be a better way of 
conquering an enemy than by depriving him of Hfe, for 
under God's direction men are inspired to do good, not 
€vil. If the thought of the Israehtes had been as united 
in observing the spirit of God's commands as it was in 
encompassing the material walls of Jericho, they would 
have been prepared to see that His way of giving them 
possession of this land included justice to all, and that 
in following that way they would hold the land in per- 
petuity and peace. Had they been prepared to see this, 
they would have gained control of this land by the law 
of right rather than of might, and the inhabitants of 
Canaan could have g'one out in peace to lands they 
might call their own, impelled by a divine impulse that 
is gentler than human mercy and mightier than the force 
of arms. 

It has been said in extenuation of the Israelites that 
they were ignorant of better things, and did the best they 
knew ; but while this may be true, and we should not de- 
mand of them more than they possessed, this fact does 
not bestow God's sanction upon murder and rapine, nor 
does it divinely authorize what is morally unjustifiable. 
It will not help the cause of Israel nor illumine her return 
pathway to try to transform her past sins into righteous- 
ness, or to cover her moral shortcomings with the mantle 
of God's word. The Israelites expressed their views of 
Deity according to their habits of thought and feeling, 
and, although their recognition of God's oneness was no 
doubt genuine, it was very limited and imperfect, and 
more or less influenced by the superstition of the period. 
Because they lightly esteemed the lives of the Canaanites, 
whom they believed to be their enemies, they assumed 
that God delivered them into their hands to be extermi- 
nated, and they thus transcribed it ; but advancing human 
thought has largely abandoned that cruel concept of 
Deity, although there is much progress yet to be made 
before the revelation of God as "Love" will be seen in 
its full glory and significance. In reading these early 
records we need to discriminate between that which was 



120 FOOTSTEPS OF ISRAEL 

inspired by divine revelation, and that which merely re- 
flected the Israelitish conception of Jehovah as the Lord 
of their nation alone, a conception which gave the color 
of divine sanction to the inhuman treatment of their foes, 
but which shut out the recognition of the impartial good- 
ness of God. 

But when all this is said, and despite their lack of re- 
finement, we must admit that the Israelites, in comparison 
with other nations, were still the people of the Lord, and 
that His presence was with them in a different sense than 
can be said of others of that time. But that does not 
necessarily mean that the conduct of this people was 
above reproach. In many wa3^s their example is valuable 
as a warning rather than as a model. The truth about 
God was slowly finding its way to human recognition 
through Israel, because, as has been repeatedly said, there 
was less opposition there ; but there was much in the hu- 
man side of Israel, and still is, to obstruct and delay the 
full recognition and acceptance of that truth. What is 
particularly helpful in these early records is their un- 
mistakable unfoldment of man's spiritual relation to 
God, whose readiness to respond to the appeal of right- 
eous faith was repeatedly exemplified throughout the 
career of this people. These evidences of divine power 
gave a glory and a value to the Hebrew Scriptures which 
all the enmity of the carnal mind has been unable to les- 
sen or obscure, and they attach an interest to the present 
and the future status of this people which time has not 
succeeded in destroying. 

At the time of the conquest Israel had not yet emerged 
from the dim twilight of tradition. We have no contem- 
poraneous account of these occurrences. The records of 
the Pentateuch were apparently gathered from various 
sources, and were put together with none too nice regard 
for their proper order or the danger of repetition; and 
with interpolations and annotations by the compiler or 
transcriber inserted as original text, a clear and com- 
prehensive reading is sometimes difficult. But there is 
no reasonable ground upon which to question the sub- 



THE COVENANT OF POSSESSION 121 

stance of these narratives. Because we know God is now, 
we know that He was then; and the experience of this 
people after coming into the Hght of history tends to con- 
firm the great things which their traditions say God did 
for Israel in her earlier years. If we accept these past 
proofs of divine power, we may be sure that in the pres- 
ent and in the future God will do all that has been prom- 
ised in His name by His inspired messengers. 

We are here following the course of Israel from the 
beginning in order to get the true perspective of what 
lies behind, that we may thereby be helped to a true per- 
spective of what lies before, and to some true idea of the 
infinity of the circle in which we now stand. Israel's 
tomorrows will be the development of her yesterdays; 
not that her past errors will continue to be repeated, but 
that the good w^hich is enfolded in her history will serve 
to prepare the way for the coming of the day of the 
Lord. " Every plant which my heavenly Father hath not 
planted shall be rooted up," said Jesus; therefore the 
evil and the superstition which so beclouded the early 
glory of Israel will disappear with progress, but the good 
which was implanted there will bear its fruit in due sea- 
son, to increase and replenish the earth. Truly Israel 
should know about her yesterdays if she would recognize 
herself today, and prepare for the great work w^hich is 
awaiting her tomorrow. 



CHAPTER XII 
The Perils of Disobedience 

If ye be willing and obedient, ye shall eat the good 
of the land. — Isa. i : 19. 

He hath shewed thee, O man, what is good; and what 
doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to 
love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God? — 
Mic. 6 : 8. 

A FTER seven years the Israelites became weary of 
Pk the conquest, and the land already taken was 
-^ -^ divided among the tribes. While the seven na- 
tions comprising the Canaanites proper were subdued they 
were not entirely driven from the country, about one- 
fourth of the land remaining in their possession. This 
failure fully to occupy the land of Canaan was in direct 
violation of their instructions, and left the covenant with 
Abraham only partially fulfilled; but the Israelites were 
too impatient to enjoy the bounties of this fertile country 
to consider seriously the danger of sharing the Promised 
Land with their enemies, a mistake for which they dearly 
paid in later years. 

If there was one thing more than another that Moses 
urged upon the attention of the Israelites, it was the 
necessity of obedience to God as the indispensable condi- 
tion of their safety and prosperity. This had been proved 
to them in some measure while they were yet in the wil- 
derness, and the incident at Ai, in the early days of the 
conquest, again emphasized the demoralizing influence 
of disobedience. When they were unable to stand be- 
fore their enemies they knew that they had transgressed 
against the Lord, and the nation mourned in humiliation. 
This lesson, however, needed to be repeated many times, 
and still continues to be repeated, for the human mind is 
slow to learn and take to heart the impossibility of dis- 
obeying the law of good and at the same time enjoying 



THE PERILS OF DISOBEDIENCE 123 

the fruits which come of righteousness. The bHnd ex- 
pectation of the IsraeHtes, that they could transgress 
God's commands and escape punishment, still survives in 
the prevalent belief that the sins and errors of mortals 
will be finally passed over and forgiven without their in- 
dividual reformation. 

While the terrible sentence against Achan and his 
family appears altogether out of proportion to the of- 
fense, it was not more inconsistent than the view of di- 
vine justice which in the later Christian centuries was 
embodied in the doctrine of eternal punishment; but it 
was imperative that the accepted belief concerning the 
administration of God's law, crude though it was, be 
carried out until a better imderstanding of that law was 
reached. It was their necessity to progress from where 
they were, and to put faith ftilly into effect what they 
conscientiously believed to be the divine will concerning 
the punishment of transgressors, else they would have 
remained stagnant or have degenerated into worse con- 
ditions. It was the carnal sense of the Israelites, the 
" old man " of the earth, not the offspring of God, that 
sinned and was punished; and the legitimate design of 
that punishment was to show the unprofitableness of 
fleshly servitude. 

Moses had set before tHem the blessing and the curse 
that they might make their choice, but neither the promise 
of material blessings nor the threat of material curses has 
ever Impelled men to seek good for Its own sake; and 
without that selfless seeking, human peace and prosperity 
can have no permanent basis. The logical necesslt}^ of 
the truth, that good Includes all that Is substantial and 
enduring, Is that the delusion of satisfaction In evil must 
sometime be broken, If need be by the reaction of suffer- 
ing. Thus In these experiences of Israel the human mind 
was becoming slowly aroused to the consciousness that 
evil carries Its own chastisement. The world has con- 
sumed a long time over this simple lesson in ethics, and 
there Is little to indicate that the lesson has yet been very 
well learned. 



124 FOOTSTEPS OF ISRAEL 

The Old Testament records devote considerable space 
to Israel's wrongdoings, not for the mere purpose of re- 
counting evil or to inform future generations, but to 
show the consequences of sin and the wisdom of avoiding 
them. The passing of Joshua had left the Israelites with- 
out a leader, with their religion as the chief bond of 
union, but this bond began to weaken as they mingled 
with the Canaanites and were beguiled by their idola- 
tries. The decline of their allegiance to Jehovah was 
naturally followed by dissensions and disunity, until 
" every man did that which was right in his own eyes," 
and as the carnal mind thus asserted its sway, the glory 
and prosperity of Israel relatively faded. 

The worship of materiality, which is embodied in the 
idolatry of all ages, necessarily deadens the spiritual 
sense, and brings the idolaters into subjection to the evil 
they exalt. The conditions of which Moses and Joshua 
had repeatedly warned them, in the event of their serving 
false gods, now began to come upon the Israelites. The 
generation which had come into Canaan, which had seen 
the great things God had done for Israel in the wilderness 
and in subduing their enemies, had passed away, and an- 
other generation had arisen " which knew not the Lord, 
nor yet the works which he had done for Israel." Not 
having these proofs in their own experience, they turned 
the more readily to the deities of the Canaanites, which 
appealed to their lower senses, and thus placed themselves 
on the same level with the people whom they had been 
commanded to drive out of the land. They were to have 
no intercourse with these people, or even to make men- 
tion of the names of their gods. It is easy to understand 
the deleterious effect this condition would have upon 
the morale of the Israelites, which their enemies were 
quick to perceive and take advantage of. It was well 
known that Israel had obtained possession of this land 
through some means associated with their religion, 
and when they became apostate to that religion, the 
Canaanites seized the opportunity to attack and defeat 
them. 



THE PERILS OF DISOBEDIENCE 125 

After several years of servitude to their enemies, the 
Israelites cried unto the Lord, and a deliverer was raised 
up for them. This recurrence of apostasy, disaster, re- 
pentance, and deliverance was repeated seven times be- 
tween Joshua and Samuel, occupying altogether a period 
of more than four hundred years. It was a continual 
round of crying unto the Lord when they were sore op- 
pressed, and of forsaking Him in time of safety; but God 
never failed to help them as often as they turned to Him 
in sincerity. These generations of sinning mortals might 
come and go, but there was that which remained un- 
changed from age to age, and that was the God of Israel. 
''For what nation is there," asked Moses, "who hath 
God so nigh unto them, as the Lord our God is in all 
things that we call upon Him for?" It is not recorded 
that any other nation recognized and acknowledged the 
same relationship to Deity. One might well ask why all 
this should be so when the Israelites proved so fickle in 
their allegiance, so unmindful of their privileges, and so 
forgetful of their blessings. Why, indeed, should God 
continue to succor and deliver this people, with all their 
wickedness and ingratitude, whenever they turned their 
faces towards Him? 

Very obviously because He could not be untrue to 
Himself. As St. Paul said, " If we believe not, yet He 
abideth faithful; He cannot deny Himself." God cher- 
ished no resentment against the Israelites because of their 
backslidings and idolatries, for the simple reason that 
resentment, anger, and revenge are entirely foreign to the 
character of Deity. If it were possible for these qualities 
of the carnal mind to become identified with God, and 
thus to become part of the divine activity, His divine 
nature would necessarily be subverted and destroyed. It 
is the possession and practice of these evil qualities that 
constitute the sinfulness of mortals, and their need of 
redemption and regeneration; therefore it were impos- 
sible for God, who is the Redeemer of men, to express the 
qualities that make up His unlikeness. The superstition 
and ignorance of the time might think and write of Him 



126 FOOTSTEPS OF ISRAEL 

as being* hot with anger against the IsraeHtes, or as sell- 
ing them into the hands of their enemies ; but Isaiah had 
a more enlightened sense when he said, " Ye have 
sold yourselves," since it was their own defection from 
good which delivered the Israelites into the hands of 
evil. 

The chronicles relating to this period indicate how in- 
tensely human w^as the Israelites' conception of Deity. 
While they acknowledged God as their king, He was a 
king with the attributes of earthly rulers, the chief dis- 
tinction between Jehovah and human beings seeming to 
be of degree rather than of quality. The thought of God 
as the sender of evil as well as good, as the destroyer as 
well as the giver of life, continued up to the time of the 
Messiah, and to some extent still remains. A degraded 
view of Deity is the logical corollary of a degraded 
view of man; therefore, as a perfect and wholly good 
creator was absolutely incompatible with an imperfect 
and sinful creation. Deity was believed to be also con-» 
scious of evil, and to permit its defiling presence through- 
out His universe. It was but a step from that belief to 
the supposition that God Himself expressed evil in His 
dealings with men. This conception was not indigenous 
to Israel, it was and is the doctrine of the carnal mind; 
and the carnal mind, by its very nature, is incapable of 
revealing the truth about either God or man. 

It will be remembered that when Jesus was once on 
the way to Jerusalem, one of the Samaritan villages re- 
fused him hospitaHty, and some of his disciples asked, 
"Lord, wilt thou that we command fire to come down 
from heaven, and consume them, as Elijah did?'' But 
Jesus rebuked them and said, " Ye know not what man- 
ner of spirit ye are of. For the Son of man is not come 
to destroy men's lives, but to save them." If, then, he 
w^ho came forth from God to do the will of the Father 
rebuked the suggestion of taking the lives of offenders 
in return for their wrongdoing, we may know without 
a doubt that God had nothing to do with bringing mis- 
fortune upon either the Israelites or their enemies, be- 



THE PERILS OF DISOBEDIENCE 127 

yond the fact that men may not transgress the law of His 
infinitude and not experience the consequences. 

As already stated, in reviewing the history of the 
Israelites we should consider the mental status of their 
times, and not expect their beliefs and practices to meas^ 
ure up to the better spirit which came in with Christian- 
ity. If the qualities and activities ascribed to God by the 
early writers and compilers of the Old Testament had 
been actually true, the world could not have progressed 
beyond them, for man may not become more excellent 
than his Maker ; but human betterment has kept pace with 
improved thoughts of Deity, and it must naturally so 
continue until God is perfectly understood in His true 
character and being, and man is understood to be His 
likeness. 

There is no doubt that the cause of true religion has 
been seriously impeded by the superstitious assumption 
that eveiy thing recorded of God in the Hebrew Scrip- 
tures is divinely authorized, and i^iust be accepted as in- 
fallible truth. As Dean Hodges points out in his work, 
Hozif to Know the Bible, Jesus reproved the disciples for 
supposing that Elijah's interpretation of God's will was 
applicable to their own time. In this instance the Master 
clearly implied that each period must be judged by its 
own thoughts of good and evil, and its own degree of 
enlightenment, not by the attainments of later ages. 
Thus the beliefs entertained by the early Israelites as to 
the nature of God and His dealings with men cannot be 
held as applicable or acceptable to the Christian thought 
of the present day. While perfection has been the stand- 
ard of Truth in every age, the progress of humanity 
towards its attainment has been slow and difficult, and is 
still far from the ideal presented by the Founder of 
Christianity. 

The records of the Israelites during the period of the 
judges point to the truth that a period or a people cannot 
rise higher than the ideals entertained of Deity. The. ma- 
teriality of the human mind had been too dense to permit 
the line of spiritual illumination to continue unbroken. 



128 FOOTSTEPS OF ISRAEL 

There was a stretch of approximately six hundred years 
between Eve and Enoch, another gap of about a thousand 
years to Noah's building of the ark, then four hundred 
years to the covenant with Abraham, and four hun- 
dred years between Joseph and Moses. The contact of the 
Israelites with the people of Egypt, and afterwards with 
the people of Canaan, naturally left its influence upon 
their religious life. While they continued to acknowl- 
edge God as One and supreme, they had comxC under the 
suggestion that evil was part of the divine plan, and that 
view quite naturally influenced their intercourse with one 
another and with the neighboring peoples. This concept 
necessarily inspired fear of both God and man, and 
prompted the offering of sacrifices for the propitiation of 
Deity. 

It should be readily seen that the true Israel was 
wholly separate from these pagan beliefs, for they were 
of Gentile origin, and hid from human view the true 
nature of divinity. Abraham's recognition of the demand 
for perfection could only have emanated from some 
glimpse of the perfection of Deity, but during their so- 
journ in Egypt the purity of this ideal was not preserved 
by the Israelites, becoming more or less corrupted by the 
polytheism of that country. The revelation of God's 
perfection came again to Moses at Horeb, and the light 
of that revelation illumined all their way from Egypt to 
Canaan. It was their sustenance in the wilderness and 
their protection in danger. But because of the disobe- 
dience of the Israelites in mingling with the people of 
Canaan and participating in their idolatry, the light again 
became obscured, until they saw God only through the 
lens of their own earthly nature, and believed Him to be 
like men. This supposition, that God possesses qualities 
which are morally wrong in human beings, would neces- 
sarily prevent human beings from overcoming these errors 
in themselves, and must continue to be inimical to the 
well-being of mankind. 

But however imperfectly they represented in their 
lives the spiritual meaning of Israel, it is evident that 



THE PERILS OF DISOBEDIENCE 129 

the highest thought of their time was always to be 
found among them, the discrepancy between their prac- 
tices and what had been taught and proved to them of 
God being no greater than now obtains between Chris- 
tians and Christianity. The ancestry of the Gentile 
races, and their development and history, are not such as 
to warrant a belief that they ever replaced Israel as 
God's medium of revelation. It is true, as their own 
records testify, that the Israelites were continually stray- 
ing into forbidden paths. Over and over again we find 
them in rebellion against the commands of the Lord, or 
bowing themselves to the gods of the heathen, but to none 
of their Gentile neighbors could one turn with the hope of 
discovering the light which seemed to be darkened in 
Israel. And when the time is come for the reappearing 
of the Christ, it must needs be in Israel that the full 
shining of the light will be seen, and whence it will 
send out its rays to all mankind ; for it were not possible 
that this light should first appear in other than the most 
spiritual consciousness. 

The raising up of the obscure individuals known as the 
judges to redeem the fortunes of Israel, and to restore 
some degree of national unity, furnishes a notable chapter 
in the history of this people. Notwithstanding her sins, 
God had not Vv^holly forsaken Israel, nor was He without 
a witness in her. Although the mission of the judges 
mainly appeared to be to deliver the Israelites from their 
enemies, and was therefore more military than religious, 
they nevertheless stood for God's supremacy. The case 
of Gideon is notably interesting because of his demand 
for signs from the Lord before he would undertake the 
national cause. The first sign, that dew should be on 
the fleece only and not on the ground, was reversed 
in the second sign, that he might be sure it was not a 
coincidence or chance event. His remarkable victory 
over the Midianites with the mere handful of men whom 
wisdom had selected for him has continued an inspiring 
illustration of what a few can do when relying upon 
God. 



130 FOOTSTEPS OF ISRAEL 

The signs which Gideon asked of God, while appar- 
ently irrelevant to the circumstances, and the mere whim 
of a sceptic, were nevertheless indicative of the funda- 
mental purpose of Israel's existence, namely, the conquest 
of materiality. In each instance Gideon was asking 
that the so-called laws of nature, as he had observed 
them, be set aside as a token that it was God who was 
directing him. The selection of the fleece and the dew 
was merely incidental. What Gideon was dimly seeking 
after was what humanity today is dimly seeking after, 
and that is the satisfying consciousness that there is a 
divine power which can be laid hold of and utilized to 
overrule the seemingly fixed modes of material sense, 
which today may seem beneficial, but which tomorrow 
may hold one in oppressive bondage. This was set forth 
in the Master's declaration to his disciples, " Behold I 
give you power . . . over all the power of the enemy," 
and this enemy is the carnal mind, the mind which claims 
to be material and to rule man by material law. 

Gideon undoubtedly showed himself to be a true 
Israelite in seeking a token of this nature. He knew that 
Israel could only be saved by the aid of spiritual power, 
as had been the case from the beginning; and he wanted 
some visible assurance that the same Presence which had 
been with Moses in his undertakings, and which had been 
with Joshua, would also be with him. He naturally felt 
that if he were being inspired by the God of Israel to do 
this work, he could surely discover it by some sign which 
involved the setting aside of what the human mind re- 
g-ards as law. What the world has been slow to perceive 
is, that the salvation of national Israel from the varying 
conditions indicated in the Scriptures, and the salvation 
of the human mind from error, are identical. Their 
belief in material power and intelligence holds mankind 
in a bondage as hard and unrelenting as that of the 
Israelites in Egypt, and it was this idolatrous belief in a 
power and intelligence apart from God that the line of 
the woman started out to overcome and destroy. Gideon 
here proved, as Moses did before him, that the material 



THE PERILS OF DISOBEDIENCE 131 

conditions which are named laws exist only in the carnal 
mind, and do not therefore belong to God's creation and 
government. 

The spell of heathen idolatry does not appear to have 
been entirely broken under any of the judges. The in- 
fluence of the belief in false gods had become so tenacious 
that the inconsistency of serving them, while at the same 
time formally acknowledging the national Jehovah or 
Lord, had ceased to be recognized. The punishment 
which came upon one generation did not deter the next 
from following the same course, until the lofty concept 
of God and of fidelity thereto, which distinguished the 
early patriarchs, had almost disappeared. 

Unfortunately the practice of idolatry has by no means 
been confined to the age of the judges, nor to any or all 
of the ages preceding or succeeding it. The Israelites fell 
into the snare of idolizing the sensual concepts of the 
carnal mind, and so do we today. Under the spell of the 
serpent, they bowed down to other gods besides the one 
God of Israel, and so do we today. 

It is true we do not offer sacrifices or burn incense to 
Baal or Moloch or Ashtoreth, but the difference is only 
one of name or form; the spirit is the same. Sensuality, 
in its various types and phases, has ever been and is the 
avenue of all idolatry, and its images and groves have not 
yet disappeared from the lands we call Christian. We 
have but to examine the creeds and doctrines and prac- 
tices of most of our modern religions to find evidences of 
an idolatry as pernicious as any that ever invaded the land 
of Israel, inasmuch as they set aside the sovereignty of 
God and endow the powers of darkness with the preroga- 
tive of Deity. The more subtle and refined expression of 
this idolati'y is the more dangerous, since it encourages 
the delusion that one is worshipping God the while he is 
bowing down to the asserted law and government of the 
carnal mind, the acknowledged enemy of all that is 
good. 

We are not to assume, however, that the errors of the 
Israelites of this period were less evil because the same 



132 FOOTSTEPS OF ISRAEL 

errors in other forms hold sway today. Then, as now, 
the effort of the serpent was to destroy the seed of the 
woman, but while the carnal mind seemed for long peri- 
ods to have held the ascendancy, and the light of Israel 
to have well-nigh gone out, the precious seed was rooted 
in the soil of spiritual consciousness and could not be 
destroyed. 



CHAPTER XIII 
The Coming of Prophets and Kings 

And I will make thee exceeding fruitful, and I will 
make nations of thee, and kings shall come out of thee. 
— Gen. 17: 6. 

I have also spoken by the prophets, and I have multi- 
plied visions, and used similitudes, by the ministry of the 
prophets. — Hos. 12 : 10. 

THE last of the judges marked the beginning of a 
new order in the religious and political life of Is- 
rael. The priesthood had been losing much of its 
earlier prestige, because the moral standard demanded by 
that high office had not been consistently maintained, and 
the priest was now to make way for the prophet, both as 
the chief religious authority and as the revealer of God's 
messages to Israel. Beginning with Samuel, the prophet 
as a teacher and interpreter of the word of the Lord be- 
came a new and notable factor in the nation ; not that the 
priestly functions were to be superseded, but that a more 
definite mode of communication, so to speak, between 
God and His people was to be established. 

The priests instructed the people out of the law, but 
could not properly be regarded as teachers in the same 
sense as were Moses and the later prophets. The mo- 
notonous repetition of formal codes, which exercised no 
regenerative influence, was not of the sort designed to 
further the purposes of Israel's existence. The Israel- 
ites had continued to revolve religiously around the 
Mosaic utterances, and punctiliously to observe all the 
requirements of outward forms, but without making any 
general spiritual progress. It is evident that something 
more vital than these repetitions was essential for the 
development of the Israel-idea. The recognition of the 
moral law was, undoubtedly, a pronounced step in the line 
of human awakening, but this naturally revealed the 



134 FOOTSTEPS OF ISRAEL 

necessity of taking the next step, and so on, since human 
consciousness will not realize the second birth through 
morality alone, but through the entrance of spirituality. 

If Israel was ever to justify her existence, the time had 
to come for a broadening and rising in her mental life. 
The repeated backslidings of her people, and the dis- 
asters which as repeatedly followed, indicated the neces- 
sity for more spiritual light rather than for more law 
and ritual. The real nature of the God declared in the 
First Commandment was obscured by the ordinances of 
the priestly office. The surrender of animality for spirit- 
uality, which was the metaphysical import of their sac- 
rifices, was lost sight of in the mere shedding of blood; 
for the attempt to appease a supposedly offended Deity 
by the sacrifice of another life than that of the sinner 
was intensely selfish on the human side, and never 
brought the worshipper one jot nearer the divine nature, 
nor made him one jot less sinful. It was imperatively 
necessary, therefore, before Israel could hope to possess 
her spiritual inheritance, that a less heathenish concept of 
God and of His attitude towards men, than was ex- 
pressed in the practice of animal sacrifices, should begin 
to be formed in the national consciousness. 

From the nature of her religion the government of 
Israel was theocratic, but it necessarily called for human 
administrators to whom the interpretation and execution 
of God's laws were entrusted; therefore the success of 
such a form of government depended upon the purity of 
the human instrument. The frailty of this instrument, 
when animated by selfish purposes, made the step between 
theocracy and autocracy but a short one, as Israel dis- 
covered in her subsequent career. Although the highest 
ideal of government is, undoubtedly, theocratic, its at- 
tainment calls for a common ground of understanding 
upon which the governed can mutually recognize their 
relation to divine authority, and by which they may de- 
termine the fitness of the human administrator. This 
naturally brings theocracy and democracy to an inevit- 
able meeting-point in human affairs, and while such an 



THE COMING OF PROPHETS AND KINGS 135 

ideal of government is not yet fully realized, it points to 
the course along which humanity must progress before 
the reign of harmony can be established in the earth 
and among its peoples. 

While the lessons of experience would point to de- 
mocracy as vastly preferable to other systems of human 
government, it is not the panacea for the world's ills, 
since it has been found to produce about as many problems 
as it solves. Democracy will have to establish its superi- 
ority by giving the divine qualities in man their practical 
place in human affairs, and by testing and choosing men 
on the ground of their moral and spiritual suitability. 

In the preface to his translation of the Scriptures 
Wycliff wrote, " This Bible is for the government of the 
people, by the people, and for the people," showing that 
the only right basis of government is the Word of God; 
and government upon that basis is democratic because in 
it the individual cannot evade his responsibility. Right 
law and right government separated from God is im- 
possible; hence the obvious conclusion, that democracy 
can succeed only as it maintains its essential relation to 
divine things. 

It naturally follows that until obedience to divine Prin- 
ciple as the supreme authority, becomes the ideal and rule 
of democracy, its highest possibilities cannot be realized. 
Democracy and theocracy must, therefore, sometime meet 
in the recognition that the law of good is the one law of 
the universe. Then will heaven mingle with earth in an 
increasing consciousness of God's kingdom. 

Between Joshua and Samuel the political affairs of 
the nation were more or less chaotic, all that preserved 
Israel from destruction as a separate people, and from 
consequent absorption by the Gentile nations, being the 
fact that the seedling of spiritual truth which had been 
implanted in her, and which antedated the formation of 
the nation, was never wholly uprooted. The sensualism of 
the human mind might seem at times almost to smother 
it beneath the ashes of indifference, or well-nigh to con- 
sume it with the fierceness of its enmity, but it unfail- 



136 FOOTSTEPS OF ISRAEL' 

ingly reappeared. Terrible things had been declared as 
the doom of this people if they should prove false to 
their God, and terrible things had been experienced by 
them, but the presence of a spiritual remnant made com- 
plete destruction impossible; and that there will always 
be this spiritual remnant is made certain by the immortal 
nature of good. A genuine perception of divinity, once 
incorporated in human consciousness and experience, 
has never been destroyed, and never can be while God's 
omnipotence remains. 

At the time of Samuel, affairs in the nation had reached 
a crisis. Enemies were threatening from without, while 
within, the country was bordering upon a state of anarchy 
and disruption. The climax came when the Philistines 
defeated the Israelites and captured the ark of the cove- 
nant, a calamity which fell upon the people as a national 
disaster, for the ark was to them the visible token of 
Israel's glory and protection. It was a memorial of her 
many deliverances, a sign that Jehovah dwelt among His 
people, and in its loss they felt bereft not only of their 
glory but of their safety. Like mortals of a later and 
more enlightened day, they mistook the shadow for the 
substance, attaching virtue and power to the symbol in- 
stead of to the idea which it represented. -^ Had they been 
faithful and obedient to the divine commands, His pres- 
ence and protection would have been realized independ- 
ently of the ark ; while their belief that His favor could be 
obtained, irrespective of their moral inconstancy, simply 
by taking the material symbol into battle, was abject 
idolatry. God's covenants were always conditional upon 
Israel's fulfilment of their terms, and without this fulfil- 
ment, the external token was as meaningless as the idols 
of their enemies. 

The incident in the house of Dagon, as recorded in 
the Scriptures, illustrated the infinite distance between 
the living God of Israel and the mythical deities of pa- 
ganism. Although but a material S3mibol, the ark of the 
covenant represented something more than superstition 
and delusion, and that was the presence of divine power 



THE COMING OF PROPHETS AND KINGS 137 

among men. Now Israel, be it always remembered, was 
God's witness among the nations. Jeremiah wrote of 
her, speaking as the voice of the Lord, " Thou art my 
battle ax and weapons of war," — and for what pur- 
pose? Not for the slaughter of human enemies, but 
for the destruction of the false beliefs about God which 
have deceived human consciousness. It was her ex- 
plicit purpose to overthrow idolatry, and to that end, 
as Israel awakens to her meaning and destiny, all that 
stands for other powers and other minds than God 
will have to be broken in pieces. In this Philistine 
temple, the great work of Israel was too plainly ex- 
emplified to be mistaken or forgotten. 

The person of Samuel, last of the judges and first 
in a new line of prophets, stands out at this critical 
time as one of the great figures in Israel's history. 
Born in response to a woman's spiritual desire, he was 
dedicated before birth to the service of the Lord, and 
set apart as a Nazarite according to the prevailing 
custom. His purity of thought was early seen in his 
sensitiveness to the divine call. As prophet, priest, and 
statesman, he guided the afifairs of Israel throughout 
one of her most trying periods, and left a name for 
unselfishness, patriotism, and magnanimity which has not 
been excelled. His career inaugurated a succession of 
prophets whose lofty ideals and spiritual teachings have 
been an inspiration to all subsequent ages, and whose 
visions of the events of the latter days have served to 
preserve the hope and sustain the faith of a conquered 
and scattered people. 

Samuel's attempt to transfer the reins of govern- 
ment to his sons did not prove acceptable, because they 
did not walk in the ways of their father, nor did they 
manifest his spirit of devotion to the well-being of 
Israel. The experiences of the nation under the ruler- 
ship of the judges did not inspire the Israelites with 
a desire for its continuance, and, although the cause 
of their misfortunes lay in their own disobedience to 
divine law, they took advantage of the disordered state 



138 FOOTSTEPS OF ISRAEL 

of the country to ask for a king. Samuel earnestly en- 
deavored to dissuade them from this course, but the 
determination to be governed after the manner of other 
nations remained unshaken, despite his gloomy picture 
of their conditions under kingly rule. 

It will be remembered that the covenant with Abra- 
ham included the promise that kings should come from 
him, and that Jacob in his final blessing designated 
Judah as the kingly tribe. Moses also referred to the 
time when Israel would choose a king, and even gave 
instruction as to his selection. It is unlikely that the 
Israelites were ignorant of these things, and it was not 
surprising, in view of the chaotic state of the country, 
that they should believe the time opportune for the set- 
ting up of a monarchy. Just where lay the * inconsist- 
ency of being under the temporal sovereignty of a 
king in place of a judge, and especially a hereditary 
judgeship such as Samuel seemed to be desirous of estab- 
lishing in his own family, is not readily apparent. The 
attitude of the Israelites towards God would be as good or 
as bad under a judge as under a king. The precise form 
of acknowledged authority was of minor importance 
so long as both ruler and people were loyal to the divine 
commands, and without this loyalty, the character of their 
political administration could make little difference. 

The theocratic system went reasonably well when 
administered by such men as Moses, Joshua, and Samuel, 
because their eye was single for the glory of God and 
the well-being of Israel; but with men of inferior type, 
the element of religious authority afforded opportu- 
nities for an abuse of power and position that the self- 
seeking could not resist. Entrusting the human with 
unqualified power in any direction has always resulted 
disastrously, and especially so when entrenched behind 
religious sentiment or superstition. Time has rounded 
many cycles since the Israelites asked for a king. King- 
doms and empires have come and gone; revolutions 
have upset governments and set up others in their places ; 
but the w^orld still waits to be ruled by him ''who hath not 



THE COMING OF PROPHETS AND KINGS 139 

lifted up his soul unto vanity, nor sworn deceitfully," who 
" despiseth the gain of oppressions, that shaketh his 
hands from holding of bribes"; and no other's right it 
is to exercise authority over mankind. 

Ever since their entry into the Promised Land, the 
Israelites had been mingling and intermarrying with the 
Canaanites, and imbibing their religious and political 
ideas, all of which was contrary to Moses' instructions. 
Their offense in demanding a king apparently lay in the 
choice of un-Israelitish ideals, that is, in preferring a 
course to which they were not divinely directed, rather 
than in the desire for a new system of temporal govern- 
ment. If, as a people, they had been obedient to their 
covenants, and had maintained in its purity the monothe- 
ism of Israel, they would have had a priesthood and an 
administration to correspond; but the Israelites had only 
themselves to blame when the pernicious seed which they 
had scattered throughout their nation brought forth its 
evil fruit. 

Whether Israel should be a monarchy or a common- 
wealth was relatively unimportant. If her people were 
loyal to the divine requirements, all would be well with 
them, but if they gave themselves over to the worship of 
other gods, no form of government known to men could 
protect them from the consequences. Because the truth 
of the one infinite God had been, to some extent, revealed 
to Israel, it would necessarily devolve upon her to make 
this truth known to the rest of mankind, not simply in the 
line of religious teaching, but to make a knowledge of 
divine power available in human affairs. It is obvious 
that the best way to do things must be learned from good, 
not evil, and this fact naturally applies itself to every 
department of human activity, whether it be in politics, 
economics, education, or religion. 

It is certain that there could be no just or permanent 
apprehension of law, or any beneficial expression thereof 
in government, apart from divinity. No nation could 
wholly separate itself from the influence of virtue and 
truth, and survive. The ruins of kingdoms and empires 



140 FOOTSTEPS OF ISRAEL 

that strew the path of history bear emphatic testimony to 
this momentous fact. The specious argument of the 
carnal mind, that Hfe, intelHg-ence, and power exist in- 
dependently of good, is the lie which has deceived every 
generation of mortals, and which continues its decep- 
tion in the very shadow of our schools and churches. 

In Young's Concordance the literal meaning of the 
word Israel is given as '^ ruling with God," and this 
is plainly what the government of Israel was designed 
to express. The human mind, on the contrary, believes 
it can govern by other means than the divine. It assumes 
the right and the power to rule by material force, will- 
power, and other phases of evil, ultimating in the worst 
forms of tyranny and despotism. Israel was the one 
nation which acknowledged God's supremacy, hence the 
commandment forbidding the acknowledgment of any 
other god, or any other governing power. Translated 
into impersonal terms, the meaning of Israel, accord- 
ing to the above definition, and as applicable to all 
earthly governments, was that men were to exercise 
authority by means of good alone, and that the law of 
righteousness must be recognized and adopted before any 
human government could approximate the divine ideal. 

If the foregoing is true, and it undoubtedly is, the 
right idea of government, with all that that term in- 
cludes, must come out of Israel, out of the truth of man's 
divine sonship. No matter what may be the name or 
aim or composition of any system of human govern- 
ment, it cannot be acceptable to God or a blessing to 
men unless its ruling power and animating influence 
proceed from goodness. The adoption of anything 
less worthy as a means of influence or control is, for 
that very reason, a usurpation of rightful authority. 
( It is clearly the prerogative of every individual and 
of every nation to be governed by good alone; and no 
governing power, whether civil, political, or religious, 
can justly assume to control the destinies of men by 
any other means. This idea was inseparable from na- 
tional as well as spiritual Israel. It was the chief corner- 



THE COMING OF PROPHETS AND KINGS 141 

stone of the national structure, and, although it has been 
rejected by the carnal mind, it must be found in its place 
at the final restoration of all things. 

What Samuel was endeavoring to impress upon the 
Israelites was that a king, such as they had in mind from 
their acquaintance with the Canaanites, would rule them 
according to the dictates of the carnal mind, and not 
according to the divine ideal which their nation rep- 
resented. To his understanding they were turning 
their backs upon God in thus looking to the outside 
nations for their political models. It was certain that 
what God had done for them and had given them were 
vastly more vital and important to their present and 
future welfare than anything which the Gentile nations 
could teach them. Were the great things which had 
glorified their past history to be set aside, that Israel 
should now seek to be governed after the manner of 
those nations which acknowledged not the true God? 

The evident mistake of the Israelites was in abandon- 
ing the ideal of divine government which preceded their 
national existence, and their acceptance of which was 
to distinguish them as the people of God. They fell 
into the common error of seeking a remedy for their 
troubles in external things, instead of correcting their 
own failure to fulfil their covenants with God. Under 
these circumstances, the mere substitution of a king for 
a judge would not lessen their difiiculties, but would 
rather tend to increase them, as the prophet pointed out, 
by the exaltation of human authority. While it was 
plainly possible for Israel to exist as a monarchy without 
sacrificing her allegiance to Divine sovereignty, the 
present agitation was very evidently not the outcome of 
progress but of chaos, and was not, therefore, likely to 
benefit the nation permanently. 

But since a king they were determined to have, a 
king Samuel gave them. Notwithstanding his strong 
personal disapprobation, the prophet assured them of 
the divine protection if both they and the king obeyed 
the voice of the Lord. The experiment seemed at first 



142 FOOTSTEPS OF ISRAEL 

to be a success. Saul broke the power of their enemies and 
consolidated the tribes into some degree of unity, but 
his reign became clouded by evil influences and ended 
in pitiful tragedy. It had been verified to Israel that, 
without God, all human sovereignty is abortive and 
vain. 



CHAPTER XIV 
The Throne of David 

Of the increase of his government and peace there 
shall be no end, upon the throne of David, and upon 
his kingdom, to order it, and to establish it with judg- 
ment and with justice from henceforth even for ever. — 
ISA. 9 : 7. 

He shall be great, and shall be called the Son of the 
Highest; and the Lord God shall give unto him the 
throne of his father David: 

And he shall reign over the house of Jacob for ever; 
and of his kingdom there shall be no end. — Luke i : 
32, 33- 

BY this time Samuel had apparently become reconciled 
to the establishment of a monarchy in Israel, and 
was in consequence more open to God's direction in 
the choice of a king. In his second attempt the prophet 
was guided at once to the tribe of Judah, in evident 
confirmation of Jacob's foresight. The simple but im- 
pressive anointing of the youngest son of Jesse deeply 
touched his spiritual nature, for it is recorded that " the 
Spirit of the Lord came upon David from that day 
forward." Thus was instituted a royal dynasty that 
was never to be wholly overthrown imtil the reign of 
the Christ should ultimately supersede it, as it is naturally 
destined to do, for divine Truth must sometime reign 
supreme in the halls of government as well as in the 
hearts of men. 

The meagre and somewhat confused records of the 
time leave much to be supplied by inference, and too 
often by the imagination, but it appears that David 
accepted, his high destiny in all seriousness, believing 
that God and not man had chosen him to be king over 
his people. This solemn conviction, imparted to him 
by the prophet of the Lord, and doubtless accepted by 
many of the Israelites, gave a higher meaning to the 



144 



FOOTSTEPS OF ISRAEL 



throne of Israel than mere political sovereignty. It can 
be seen that the oneness of God, as He was revealed to 
the founders of the Hebrew nation, could never be disso- 
ciated from the sovereign power, no matter how disloyal 
to the divine idea some of its administrators might be, 
or how blind the people to the spiritual genesis of Israel. 

The newly anointed king-elect gave early promise 
of the courage and resourcefulness w^hich were to stand 
him in such good stead in the stormy period that lay 
between him and the throne, and which later won rec- 
ognition in the palace of Saul and in the affection of 
the people. In his famous duel with Goliath, David's 
challenge indicated the spirit of the man : " I am come 
to thee in the name of the Lord of hosts, the God of 
the armies of Israel . . . this day will the Lord de- 
liver thee into mine hand . . . that all the earth may 
know that there is a God in Israel." He had already 
acknowledged God as his deliverer from the lion and the 
bear, and he was now to prove to the whole nation, to 
use his own words, that " the battle is the Lord's." This 
recognition of divine power as at hand to deliver from 
the enmity of the carnal mind at once marked him as 
a true Israelite, and gave him his large and enduring 
place in the history of the nation. 

Although first crowned king over Judah only, David 
was later acknowledged as king over the whole nation, 
and continued thus to the close of his reign. So far as 
the thought and customs of the age made possible, he 
appears to have exemplified the true monarchic ideal, 
that the king is the sen^ant rather than the master of 
the nation, and derives his real authority, not alone 
from family inheritance or the will of the people, but 
from his own moral and spiritual qualities. This fact 
naturally discloses the weak point in all hereditary ruler- 
ship, since it is necessarily a matter of individual con- 
sciousness and attainment, not the accident of birth, 
which decides one's fitness to govern. Israel was to 
learn through many bitter experiences, as other nations 
have had to learn, that the son does not always possess 



THE THRONE OF DAVID 145 

the worthiness or the wisdom of the father. True 
kingly succession belongs to type rather than to person, 
and it is in this higher or spiritual sense that the throne 
of David is frequently referred to in the Scriptures. 

David apparently recognized that he held his throne 
by the grace of God, and that his kingly power was 
to be exercised in trust for his people, rather than to 
further personal ambition or aggrandizement. While 
there was a show of similarity to his predecessor in the 
means and manner of his selection, there the similarity 
ended. Saul's idea of kingship partook more of the 
type of his Gentile neighbors, whereas, despite the rude 
conditions of his time, David approximated a more 
spiritual conception of his position and its responsi- 
bilities, and of Israel's peculiar place among the nations. 
Early in his experience he had come close to the fact 
that God is a source of strength and protection in the 
hour of danger, and he doubted not that God would 
preserve his people from evil while they served Him 
in sincerity. He was not unmindful of Israel's divinely 
appointed destiny, and that unless he proved faithful 
to her ideals, his reign would be a failure as Saul's 
had been before him. 

When Jacob prophetically designated Judah as the 
holder of the sceptre he did not necessarily imply royal 
honors for the whole tribe, but that out of it, by the 
process of mental selection, Israel's kingly line would 
come forth and remain until the coming of Shiloh, an 
event which evidently belongs to the period of the res- 
toration. Israel's destiny was not to remain a perpetual 
monarchy, under a human king, but to prepare God's 
throne in the earth, and to prepare the earth for His 
supreme government. Israel will not vacate her place 
among the nations until this is accomplished, and her 
heavenly King is acknowledged and enthroned, for if 
this people were to become absorbed by the Gentile 
races, and the line of the woman ceased to have a 
human instrument and representative, it would mean a 
return to pre-Israelitish barbarism and idolatry. 



146 FOOTSTEPS OF ISRAEL 

The coming of Shiloh indicates that era of peace and 
good will towards which the faces of mankind are eagerly 
and anxiously turning, when the Christ shall reign upon 
the earth, and God's will be done as in heaven. This 
new era, wherein the new heavens and new earth are 
to appear, can begin its course, and open a new history 
for the race, only as the human or material sense gives 
place to the divine or spiritual sense, and all forms of 
despotism and self-seeking give up their fear-hold upon 
mortals. 

But in the meantime, while mortal passions so readily 
sway the multitude, and while the sensual takes pre- 
cedence in human thought over the spiritual, the Judaic 
line of kings, the line of David, is to continue in Israel. 
And tha Judaic line of kings, as namea in David, stood 
for something more than political dominion or authority, 
for from the beginning it shadowed forth the absolute 
sovereignty of God, although somewhat obscured by 
the Hebrew concept of a national Jehovah. It is true 
this ideal of divine sovereignty in the nation was at 
times submerged to the point of apparent extinction, but 
it always reappeared, because it was incorporated in 
the very nature and constitution of Israel. In its prog- 
ress towards spiritual awakening, human thought must 
go on with its turning and being overturned until the 
reign of Truth appears, and man's control over man 
shall cease. 

All this of course means that, even on earth, kings 
are to be eventually dispensed with, and all selfish or 
unlimited exercise of human power will disappear when 
good is understood to be the equal possession and pro- 
tection of all men, and no other government than divine 
Love will be needed. Conditions in Israel at the coming 
of her prophets and kings indicated a tremendous dis- 
tance from that ideal state, as they did during most of 
her later history, but to consider this subject justly we 
cannot afford to lose sight of the fact, at any point 
along the way, that Israel's spiritual mission was not 
intended to be absorbed in the functions of her nation- 



THE THRONE OF DAVID 147 

hood, but to be preserved and promoted thereby. It is 
this great mission to make God known to all mankind 
which links up the future with the present and the past, 
which shows the whole question of Israel to be in- 
separable from the salvation of the world, and therefore 
as one w^ith the Christ. 

David was enough of a seer to recognize these things, 
and not to be deceived by any earthly glory that might 
attend his kingdom. He appears to have grasped, in a 
measure at least, the significance of both literal and 
spiritual Israel; and while not minimizing or neglect- 
ing the former, it is plain that he looked to the latter to 
declare and embody the real greatness of the nation. 
This discernment qualified him to be the founder of 
the greatest and most enduring dynasty the world has 
known, and it w^as to endure and be exalted to honor 
because of the germ of spiritual truth which had been 
implanted in Israel, and which was to grow and in- 
crease until it replenished the earth. It was the royal 
line of " the woman," and as such could never wholly 
pass aw^ay until the Edenic prophecy be fulfilled. 

It should be becoming continually clearer that, if we 
separate her from her spiritual meaning and mission, 
Israel w^ould be but one among other groups of mortals, 
with nothing to lift her above the general level of hu- 
manity. We have seen the divine hand unmistakably 
indicated in the spiritual selection which led to the rise 
and development of this people, in the wonderful events 
of their early history, and confirmed by the fact that 
in no other nation was God's oneness truly known or 
acknowledged. Thus it can be said that Deity was 
literally the substance of Israel's history, and that her 
obedience or disobedience to the divine commands was 
always the determinative factor in her destiny. 

What else was there to endure, or that merits en- 
durance, about this or any other race or people, except 
their godliness? Disloyalty to the highest known good, 
whether in the case of a man or of a nation, is not real 
history, since nothing is worthy to be remembered that 



148 FOOTSTEPS OF ISRAEL 

is not fitted to survive. The evil things recorded of 
the Israelites did not pertain to or proceed from the 
real Israel, but from that which was foreign to it, 
!as expressed throughout the Scriptures in the word 
Gentile; and unless we make this discrimination, and 
separate the sensual from the spiritual, we shall fail 
to discern Israel's real identity, and her place among 
the nations of today. It is the writer's aim to keep 
these facts well to the front lest they become obscured in 
the accumulating details of persons and events, humanly 
interesting in their historical relation, but important 
chiefly as evidence corroborative of higher things. 

David's influence upon the thought of Israel was 
such that henceforth the royal line was to be named 
in him rather than in Judah. The tribe became eclipsed 
in the greatness of the man, and in turn the man 
disappeared in the type for which his name became a 
synonym. Standing midway between ithe traditional 
beginning of human history and the present age, David 
is easily the central figure in Israel's national life. 
While he did great things for the nation in sub- 
duing her enemies, and in completing the conquest of 
Canaan according to the instructions given to Moses and 
Joshua, he is most widely known because of the sacred 
writings with which his name has for ages been asso- 
ciated. The mention of David at once calls to mind 
those wonderful Hebrew hymns which have stimulated 
the hope and inspired the faith of both Jew and Chris- 
tian, although modern scholars and critics tell us that 
the great founder of the royal line of Israel was the 
author of only a few of the psalms which bear his name. 

This disappointment, however, serves to turn our 
thoughts the more from the man to the type. It is 
obvious that many of the promises and prophecies re- 
garding David do not refer to his person but to that 
which he represented. This is illustrated, for example, 
in the case of Abraham. The promise that in Abraham 
all the nations of the earth were to be blessed clearly 
could not refer to his personality, but to that which he 



THE THRONE OF DAVID 149 

so exemplified in his life as to become synonymous 
with his name. Thus Abraham is the heritage of all 
mankind as an ideal of loyalty to one's highest con- 
ception of good, in the sense that Paul wrote to the 
Galatians, '' they which be of faith are blessed with 
faithful Abraham." 

The circumstances attending David's anointing at the 
hands of the prophet Samuel, while he was yet a stripling 
on his father's farm, the many remarkable events lead- 
ing up to his coronation, his dramatic victory over the 
Philistine giant, all appealed strongly to the romantic 
nature of the Hebrews, and to the hero-worship which 
is inherent in the human mind. Added to this were the 
conspicuous prosperity of his reign, his passionate de- 
votion to the national religion, and the high position 
achieved by the nation under his leadership. In view 
of all this, the idealization of David as a man and a 
king " after God's own heart," and as representing the 
divine sovereignty over His chosen people, can easily 
be understood, despite his occasional lapses into gross 
error which, while inexcusable, were less inconsistent 
with the moral standards of his time than with our own. 

Thus the exaltation of David as a type in Israel is 
not without ground or reason. There had been many 
periods of disorder, defeat, and national humiliation 
since the passing of Joshua left the Israelites without 
a head and surrounded by hostile neighbors. Under 
David, whom they had accepted as their divinely chosen 
king, they had become united and prosperous, triumph- 
ant over their enemies, and an acknowledged power 
among the nations. What more natural than that the 
name of David should come to stand in the nation for 
the highest expression of Israel, and for the embodi- 
ment of her ideals? And what more natural than to 
conclude, in the light of Israel's extraordinary origin 
and history, that the divine kingship foreshadowed in 
David would never be without its rightful representative 
on the throne, and that that representative would always 
be of his ow^n lineage? It will be remembered that the 



150 FOOTSTEPS OF ISRAEL 

blind man appealed to Jesus as the " son of David," 
which shows that the Jews attached a higher significance 
to that name than is implied in the human thought of 
royalty or of personality. 

The prophet Nathan apparently referred to this when 
he announced the perpetuity of the house of David : *' and 
thine house and thy kingdom shall be established forever 
before thee." David's kingdom certainly could not be 
established forever before him in any personal or literal 
sense, so that here the name evidently expressed more 
than the personality of the man. The student of 
prophetic Scripture sometimes has in mind an unbroken 
line of kings, extending from that time to ours, all of 
the lineage of David, as the proper fulfilment of this 
and similar passages, and it is not denied that that may 
consistently be looked for; but even if that conclusion 
were historically verified, it would simply prove the case 
by external evidence which, of itself alone, is always 
inconclusive. The ripening process of time has reached 
the point where the need is to break open the outer 
protective shell which has served its purpose, and dis- 
close the satisfying kernel. Unless we get at this inner 
meat, this ''hidden manna," we shall spiritually starve 
on the husk of the letter, the literal or human side of 
Israel. 

It was very clearly the recognition of God's govern- 
ment in the earth, as typified in the kingdom of David, 
which was to be maintained, and which alone could 
link up the kings of the nation with the spiritual mJssion 
of Israel. Therefore what is called the Davidic covenant 
had a much broader significance than the securing of the 
throne for David's descendants, or than the preservation 
of the national integrity or existence. Its predominant 
feature was the perpetuation of Israel itself, not as a 
nation merely but as an idea, the idea that was faintly 
discerned by the woman in the story of Eden, and that 
had been steadily growing to human perception. It 
was this dawning spiritual sense of being, as contrasted 
with the materialism of the carnal mind, which was the 



THE THRONE OF DAVID 



151 



real chosen of the Lord, and which could not be destroyed 
because its seed was in itself, in its inherent truthfulness. 

Without the recognition and acceptance of the truth 
about God, as the foundation and support of the nation 
and of her institutions, it could matter little whether 
any of David's descendants occupied the throne or not, 
or whether the nation itself endured. On the other 
hand, the preservation of this truth in human con- 
sciousness would necessarily involve the right vehicle 
for its human expression and activity. 

The position of Israel in these days of prophetic 
fulfilment will not be weakened or obscured by keeping 
the spiritual and the material aspects of this question 
where they belong. The last should not be put first 
and the first last. Material conditions must always 
be secondary to the spiritual, and the human to the 
divine. The one obvious purpose of a vehicle is that 
something may be conveyed by means of it, not that 
it should obstruct or take the place of the thing to be con- 
veyed. In other words, it is valuable for its service rather 
than for its own sake. In like manner, as before 
pointed out, but which like some other things will bear 
much repetition, Israel came into existence as a separate 
people or nation to be a vehicle by which the truth 
perceived of God might reach the rest of mankind; but 
the incidental details of this human vehicle, interesting 
as they undoubtedly are and important in their place, 
should not be allowed to overshadow the larger and 
more vital issues. Thus the identity of Israel in the 
latter days must be sought for and tested by the fact 
of her being the vehicle to humanity of the truth about 
God, rather than by mere external or historical evidences. 

The throne of David, which was to be " established 
forever," logically signified more than political power 
or authority, since all human things are temporal, and 
must have referred to a realization of power and author- 
ity that transcends the material. What could this be 
but that consciousness of divine power which gave Jacob 
his new name, and which was Israel's national birth- 



152 FOOTSTEPS OF ISRAEL 

mark? This everlasting throne was not, therefore, the 
expression of human authority, nor did it belong to 
David or his descendants in any personal sense, but 
represented the eternal sovereignty of the God of Israel. 
Because it was true that there was no other God, the 
power vested in a right perception of Him would nec- 
essarily endure and have some form of expression, 
despite the lapses and backslidings which might tem- 
porarily darken that perception. Earthly kings and 
kingdoms continue to come and go, and their glory and 
their greatness are as the grass that withereth and the 
flower that fadeth away, but only that which declares 
the glory of God can abide forever. 

To suppose, however, that God enters into uncon- 
ditional covenants with sinning mortals, in order to 
bring about certain human ends, is to misunderstand 
the absolute nature of Deity. God's ways and means 
are necessarily divine, not human, otherwise He would 
Himself be human. Reading into the letter of Scripture 
what is contrary to its spirit only serves to defeat the 
purpose of divine revelation. It is impossible to think 
rightly of the Infinite as making terms with the finite, 
for this would leave us without a conception of infinity, 
and therefore without a true sense of the oneness of God. 

It is the so-called carnal mind that argues for un- 
conditional and unmerited favor and protection at the 
hands of the Almighty, that would blend good and 
evil as one intelligence, and name God as consenting 
to this monstrosity. Throughout the inspired Scripture 
runs a line of absolute separation between what is and 
what is not of God; and between these opposites there 
is and can be neither affinity, sympathy, nor communion. 

It was what David manifested of the divine nature 
which constituted his greatness and made him beloved 
of the Lord ; whereas the evil in his carnal nature, which 
constituted his human weakness, was neither condoned 
nor compromised with by God, but was left to its own 
self-punishment and final destruction. From the begin- 
ning Israel stood for the overcoming of evil, not for its 



THE THRONE OF DAVID 



153 



acknowledgment. Fidelity to the First Commandment, 
which denied the existence of other gods, was sure to 
work out in the experience of Israel the self-destruction 
of whatever would oppose the reign of good in human 
consciousness, a process which ignorance or superstition 
might attribute to an angry God, but which is simply 
the result of the falsity and groundlessness of evil coming 
to light. All this is related intimately to the question 
of David's throne and to the succession of his line, 
because no sovereignty could be consistent with Israel's 
history and destiny which did not rest upon God's su- 
premacy and infinitude. 

'The ''throne of David" is without doubt used in 
Scripture w^ith a metaphysical meaning and should be 
so understood. Like all human terms it naturally has 
a literal application, but its higher import possesses our 
chief interest, and embraces much more than the personal 
kingship of David or the fate of his posterity. It goes 
back to the time when it was said to Jacob, "As a 
prince hast thou prevailed." In that experience was 
laid the foundation stone of the spiritual kingdom of 
Israel, and every later instance of subduing the carnal 
mind served to strengthen this throne, which w^as to 
stand in the symbolic language of the Scriptures, not 
for man's dominion over man, but for man's dominion 
over evil as the son of God. 

The greatest honor that could rest on the Davidic line 
was the appearing in it of him w^ho was preeminent in 
Israel, of whom Pilate asked, "Art thou a king?" 
Although a thousand years distant, the resplendent glory 
of that event, "the brightness of his coming," was 
already prophetically lighting up the mountain tops of 
Israel. Greater than the promise of the perpetuity of 
his kingdom was this selection of his house as the 
lineage of the Messiah, which established the fact beyond 
question that David represented the direct line of "the 
woman," both literally and spiritually. 



CHAPTER XV 
A House Divided 

Whereas there is among you envying, and strife, 
and divisions, are ye not carnal, and walk as men? — 
I Cor. 3:3. 

For the kingdom is the Lord's : and He is the governor 
among the nations. — Ps. 22 : 28. 

WITH peace established throughout his reign, Sol- 
omon raised the kingdom of Israel to its highest 
point of material prosperity and national influ- 
ence, although it is not shown that these became a blessing 
to himself or to the nation. It is recorded that in a dream 
of the night God offered the new king his choice of what 
He should give him, and that he named wisdom as the 
thing he most desired. Because he had chosen well, and 
for the sake of his people rather than for himself, he was 
also to receive both riches and honor. While his dream 
came true in respect to the latter, and great possessions 
were his in abundance, the history of his reign does not 
disclose the wisdom to be expected from one divinely 
endowed. The record of David's youngest son, brilliant 
though it was in some respects, does not point to the 
wisdom which the apostle describes as coming from God. 
His enormous revenues were recklessly squandered in 
the extravagant appointments of his court, and in the 
unrestrained indulgence of his whims and desires. What 
men count honor came to him, it is true, chiefly because 
of the external glories of his kingdom, and because 
of the intellectual astuteness which passed for wisdom; 
but withal he did not prove wise enough to shape his 
reign to the best interest of himself or of his kingdom. 

Had Solomon -indeed possessed " a wise and un^ 
derstanding heart," he would surely have been aware 
of the folly of forsaking the pure monotheism of Israel 



A HOUSE DIVIDED 155 

for the gods of his Gentile wives. While his reign 
began most auspiciously with the building of the great 
temple, the first known building erected for the wor- 
ship of the one God, and while his prayer on the occasion 
of its dedication gave promise of a noble career, it was 
not long ere his kingly bark grounded in the shoals 
of sensuality, and his light went out in the temples of 
his idols. Truly was it fulfilled in him that " the wisdom 
of their wise men shall perish." It would seem that 
the superior understanding with which he has been 
credited must have been reversed in his later life, else 
his career would not have ended with the wail of dis- 
illusionment which we find in the book of Ecclesiastes, 
for divine wisdom does not lead mortals into "vanity 
and vexation of spirit." 

The first ray of true wisdom which lighted human 
consciousness was the recognition that only good should 
be believed and obeyed; and, as the nature of God 
became better understood, the folly of going contrary 
thereto became correspondingly more evident. In com- 
mon Avith other mortals, the Israelites were besieged 
by the suggestion, put fonvard continuously by the 
carnal senses, that there was something outside the spir- 
itual consciousness of being which they were justified 
in taking into their experience. The way of wisdom 
was stated with unmistakable clearness in what is called 
the First Commandment, first in order and importance, 
obedience to which would have saved Israel from her 
failures and misfortunes. 

We read that Solomon so far succumbed to the allure- 
ments of evil as to erect altars in the midst of Israel for 
the worship of strange gods. The writer of the book 
of Ecclesiastes discloses the motive of the king's idola- 
trous course, namely, that he might indulge his physical 
desires to the full. This does not necessarily apply to 
Solomon more than to the average mortal, except that 
his position enabled him to gratify his passions without 
restraint. This course naturally led him to exalt other 
gods, or other sources of good, than the " Holy One " 



156 FOOTSTEPS OF ISRAEL 

of Israel. The consequences of taking this course re- 
vealed, not only how absolutely at variance it was with 
the will of God, but how absolutely at variance with 
the divine reality of things were the senses which led 
him and his people into idolatry. The acknowledgment 
in Israel, that Deity is one, and therefore all, was as 
inseparable from the throne as from the temple, from 
the king as from the priest and commoner; and king 
and priest and commoner found to their cost that they 
could not set aside this corner-stone of their nation. 
This truth of God's infinitude was the stone spoken of 
by Jesus, when he said, "Whosoever shall fall on this 
stone shall be broken; but on whomsover it shall fall, 
it will grind him to powder." 

The experience of Solomon reveals sensualism as 
the underlying motive of idolatry, therefore that what 
mortals name evil is but the enthronement of matter as 
a source of life and intelligence. The king was plainly 
lured into recreancy to the God of Israel through the 
old-time suggestions, of the serpent, alias physical sense, 
or a perverted sense of being as physical instead of 
spiritual. This perverted sense is not, therefore, the 
mode of good but of evil, or the deception by which the 
carnal mind asserts itself to be something, and to exercise 
power over men. The altars which Solomon set up to 
strange gods merely evidenced his mental apostasy. In 
Sinai, Moses realized that loyalty and obedience could 
not be divided between the God who had revealed 
Himself as the eternal I AM, as the one Mind or self- 
consciousness, and the belief that something else also 
had self-existence and intelligence. Between these 
mental opposites there never has been and never can 
be mutual sympathy or agreement. It had been re- 
peatedly urged upon the Israelites, that God required 
their obedience to good alone, but what they apparently 
failed to recognize was, that the way of evil always lay 
through the appeal of the carnal senses. 

The human consciousness had been feebly groping 
its way towards the spiritual or immortal sense of being, 



A HOUSE DIVIDED 



157 



and, although the founders and leaders of this upward 
movement had been men of exalted vision, the general 
thought of the Israelites at that time had risen little 
or no higher than a recognition of the law of moral- 
ity, a recognition which also obtained, to some extent, 
among the Gentiles. -The first and great command- 
ment of her law forbade the acknowledgment of other 
gods, but it was not then fully seen that the universal 
idolatry of the race is the carnal-mindedness that would 
clothe man in the garb of flesh, and hold him under its 
debasing claims? The subservience of the Israelites to 
these lower demands led them into agreement with what 
the Scriptures call " strange gods," in other words, with 
beliefs about God and man which were incompatible 
with the oneness of God as taught in Israel. This sense 
idolatry, symbolized in all idol worship, had permeated 
even the priesthood, and now invaded the throne itself, 
.^he concept of good as physical was exalted to its pin- 
nacle by the " wise man," who only began to enter the 
way of wisdom when he discovered ''jio profit under 
the sun" in the choicest things of material sense.. 

It had been proved over and over again through- 
out her history that Israel could not thrive in an idola- 
trous atmosphere. Her very existence depended upon 
her spirituality. Because Solomon had utterly failed to 
appreciate this, his kingdom was now to be divided. The 
king had burdened the people for the means to gratify 
his desires, and when his son Rehoboam would have 
increased these burdens, ten of the tribes revolted and 
formed a separate kingdom, to be known by the name 
of Israel, leaving Benjamin and Judah to continue under 
the reign of the Davidic line, to be known as the king- 
dom of Judah. This division of national Israel con- 
tinued up to the final captivity, and, so far as Judah is 
concerned, still exists. The house of Joseph represent- 
ing Israel, and the house of Judah representing the kingly 
line of David, from now on went their separate ways. 

The nation thus divided began to drift further and 
further from her allegiance to God. Kings and people 



158 FOOTSTEPS OF ISRAEL 

turned to the carnal mind and followed its evil counsel. 
Jeroboam led the northern kingdom of Israel into such 
excesses of idolatry that his name became a byword and 
a reproach in after generations, while we read that in 
Judah they '' built them high places, and images and 
groA^es, on every high hill, and under every green tree." 
This continued with more or less variation during the 
history of these two kingdoms. Of the nineteen kings 
that ruled over the ten tribes of Israel, not one followed 
the example of David in adhering loyally to the one God, 
and for somxC two hundred and fifty years the northern 
kingdom, under its idolatrous rulers, lapsed deeper and 
deeper into the worship of evil. Jehovah was supplanted 
by the gods of their enemies. Israel had played false 
to her God, to her ideals, to her high destiny, and was 
plunging recklessly and blindly into the darkness ahead. 

During these evil days there were notable attempts to 
recall the nation from her apostasy and impending ca- 
lamity. There is nothing finer in the records of her 
prophets than the efforts of Elijah and Elisha to redeem 
the Israelites from their idolatry. The challenge of 
Elijah to the priests of Baal still retains its inspir- 
ing appeal for lo3^alty to the God of Israel, w^hile his 
marvellous triumph, in face of the apparently over- 
whelming impossibility of achievement from a material 
standpoint, should reassure the timid faith of all after 
ages that the divine Spirit is omnipresent as the only 
power, notwithstanding the cold stubbornness of material 
testimony to the contraiy. 

In this incident Elijah presented the third sign which 
Moses was commanded to show to his brethren in Egypt, 
namely, his control over matter and its asserted laws. 
This sign of man's spiritual dominion was interwoven 
with. Israel's history, and must also be found in the 
latter days as one of the proofs of her identity. It was 
employed by the prophet during the famine which came 
upon Israel in the reign of Ahab, when the widow of 
Zarephath, and Elijah, and her house, subsisted upon 
" an handful of meal in a barrel and a little oil in a 



A HOUSE DIVIDED 159 

cruse"; and we read that '*the barrel of meal wasted 
not, neither did the cruse of oil fail, according to the 
word of the Lord, which he spake by Elijah." The 
verity and importance of these proofs were later veri- 
fied in the work of Christ Jesus, thereby establishing 
beyond question, not only the absolute supremacy of 
Spirit, but that Spirit was and is the one God of Israel. 

All these things serve to illustrate the apostle's mean- 
ing when he said, " The carnal mind is enmity against 
God." They also corroborate the conclusion that all 
forms of idolatry rest upon a denial of the infinitude of 
Spirit, and the exaltation of matter or the flesh as 
possessing divine qualities and attributes. Sensuality 
and spirituality are found in human experience to be 
mental opposites, the latter always leading mortals to 
good and the former to evil, and this simple fact will 
serve to guide us in discriminating between the real and 
the unreal Israel, or between that which is of God and 
that which contradicts His oneness or infinitude. 

The true understanding of man's spiritual dominion 
as the son of God, enabled Moses to subdue material 
conditions, and the accumulated evidences of this power 
which were furnished by Elijah and Elisha survive the 
denials of the carnal mind. These proofs of the ampli- 
tude of Mind in supplying the needs of men were con- 
firmed and extended by the Messiah, thus establishing 
their rightful place in the mission of Israel, and their 
scientific relation to human salvation. It is by these 
waymarks alone that we can trace the footsteps of Israel, 
and not by mere racial distinction or descent. Let us, 
therefore, look for and welcome these spiritual foot- 
prints, if we would not lose our way amid the mass of 
material literalism w4th which human thought surrounds 
the saving truth of divine revelation. ^ 

That the healing of the sick by spiritual means alone 
was also at this time naturally associated with the re- 
ligious thought of Israel, was made manifest at the heal- 
ing of the son of the widow of Zarephath, when she said 
to Elijah, "Now by this I know that thou art a man of 



i6o FOOTSTEPS OF ISRAEL 

God, and that the word of the Lord in thy mouth is 
truth," in other words, she knew by what he had done 
that he was a true exponent of the divine Word. And 
again, when Naaman the Syrian said to EHsha, " Now 
I know that there is no God in all the earth, but in Israel." 
And why so? Why should these people say, ''Now I 
know," if there was not something in what had taken 
place that was particularly pertinent in establishing the 
verity of the God of Israel? That this was true the 
records bear testimony, and the student of Israel's destiny 
in the world, today and tomorrow as well as yesterday, 
must follow along this line of research, until he perceives 
that the true idea of Israel is identical with the healing 
Christ, so abundantly expressed in the life and work of 
Jesus, and without which human regeneration would be 
impossible. 

Thus in the midst of the darkness of this terrible time, 
when the nation was heedlessly working out its own 
damnation, Israel was not left wholly without a light 
and a witness of the power and presence of her God. 
During these evil days, when idolatry held its paralyzing 
grasp upon the thought of the people, it was the work of 
the prophets to keep the spiritual lamp of Israel from 
going out, a work whose value cannot easily be over- 
estimated, but which in the larger light of Christian 
revelation and accomplishment we are sometimes apt to 
overlook. The perception of the true God which had 
reached human consciousness through Abraham, Jacob, 
and Moses, could not be destroyed by the overwhelming 
tide of infidelity which was engulfing the nation. /Tt was 
whispered to Elijah, in a moment of extreme loneliness 
and despondency, that there were still seven thousand in 
Israel whose thoughts were uncorrupted with idolatry. 
This was God's census of His people. The names of this 
remnant have not come down to us, but their influence 
has remained unwasted, for it was their spirit of quiet 
devotion to the true ideal that kept the salt of Israel from 
losing its savour, and that nourished and preserved the 
spiritual seed of the woman. 



A HOUSE DIVIDED i6i 

In reviewing this period one might well pause in con- 
templation of the character and experiences of Elijah, so 
fully did they interpret the inner meaning of Israel, and 
so clearly did they indicate its utter oppositeness to ma- 
teriality. Although Elijah belonged entirely to the north- 
em kingdom, and contributed not a word to the sacred 
literature of the Hebrews, he has been regarded as the 
greatest of the prophets, and took his place in the 
thoughts of the Jews as the forerunner of the Messiah. 
He was the link between the law and the gospel, since 
it was he who appeared with Moses on the mount of 
transfiguration. His remarkable work betokened a near- 
ness to God, and a comprehension of the spiritual facts 
of being, which are not encountered elsewhere between 
Moses and Christ Jesus. Here was an Israelite indeed, 
not because of birth or residence, but because of his close 
acquaintance with the God of Abraham, an acquaintance 
which enabled him to expose the iniquity of the carnal 
mind and the illusion of its gods. 

Let us accompany this prophet to the famous " mount 
of God," where Moses so wondrously glimpsed the nature 
of Deity as the eternal I AM, and grasped something of 
the supremacy of Mind. We learn from the record that 
as Elijah was fleeing from the ven*geance of Jezebel he 
was visited by an angel from God, by whom he w^as mi- 
raculously fed, and the inspiration of that experience 
sustained him during the forty days' journey to Horeb. 
Here it dawned upon his consciousness that God is not 
present in the so-called forces of nature. He w-as not in the 
earthquake, the wind, or the fire : He was not in matter 
at all. It was surely worth that long and perilous journey 
to learn this fact, and that man may commune with God 
in the quiet of spiritual desire and understanding. It 
was here impressed upon Elijah that the Supreme Being 
is not revealed through material sense, but that He is to be 
worshipped in spirit, or spiritually, as Jesus afterwards 
taught. That the prophet was faithful to his higher 
sense of Deity is implied in the account of his ascension 
above the reach of mortality. Be that as it may, there 



;i62 FOOTSTEPS OF ISRAEL 

was that about this remarkable man that breathed the 
spirit of Israel as transcending the expression of race or 
nationality, even as that which was preparing the way for 
the full appearing of the Christ. 

The impression produced by Elijah's denunciation and 
exposure of Baalism was not lasting. The southern king- 
dom of Judah for a time maintained the worship of 
Jehovah, but it was not long until practically the whole 
nation had succumbed to open idolatry. Incense to Gen- 
tile deities arose from every part of the land. It is evi- 
dent that this state of things could not long endure, since 
neither individuals nor nations can obey evil indefinitely 
and remain immune from its evil consequences. The out- 
come of the course they were pursuing had been placed 
before them, and was again foreshadowed by the prophet 
Ahijah to the wife of Jeroboam: "For the Lord shall 
smite Israel, as a reed is shaken in the water, and he shall 
root up Israel out of this good land, which he gave to 
their fathers, and shall scatter them beyond the river." 
It is apparent that nothing else could logically happen. If 
their covenant with God required obedience to His com- 
mandments as the condition of continued occupancy, as 
it plainly did, it would naturally follow that their per- 
sistent disobedience to these commandments, and the re- 
pudiation of their covenant, would forfeit their right to 
remain in its possession. 

The long standing judgment against Israel began to be 
finally administered in the reign of Hosea, king of the 
northern division of the nation, when he was defeated 
and carried into captivity, with many of his people, by 
Shalmaneser, king of Assyria. About one hundred and 
thirty- four years later a similar fate overtook the southern 
kingdom of Judah, when Nebuchadnezzar, king of Baby- 
lon, carried the main portion of the people into his own 
country, although the execution of this sentence upon the 
whole nation consumed many years. 



CHAPTER XVI 

In Exile 

For, lo, I will command, and I will sift the house of 
Israel among all nations, like as corn is sifted in a sieve, 
yet shall not the least grain fall upon the earth. — Amos 

9:9. 

And I will scatter thee among the heathen, and dis- 
perse thee in the countries, and will consume thy filthi- 
ness out of thee. 

And thou shalt take thine inheritance in thyself in the 
sight of the heathen, and thou shalt know that I am the 
Lord. 

Thus saith the Lord God; Although I have cast them 
far off among the heathen, and although I have scattered 
them among the countries, yet will I be to them as a 
little sanctuary in the countries where they shall come. 
EzEK, 22: IS, 16; II : 16. 

And the remnant of Jacob shall be in the midst of 
many people as a dew from the Lord, as the showers 
upon the grass. — Mic. 5 : 7. 

TO all appearance the national existence of the He- 
brews had come to an end. The people of both the 
northern and southern kingdoms, with the exception 
of some of the poorer classes, had been literally rooted up 
and transported to the lands of their conquerors. Let it 
not be supposed, however, that the conquest of Israel had 
been accomplished from without. Although the northern 
kingdom had been completely subdued by the Assyrians, 
and although Judah had been at the mercy of her enemies 
on either side for some time prior to her final defeat, this 
humiliating condition was not due to the superior physical 
force of their adversaries, but to the weakening and de- 
moralizing effect of their own disloyalty to God. They 
had reached the place where they no longer relied upon 
divine protection. One has but to recall the occasions in 
their history, from the conquest of Canaan to the defeat 
of Sennacherib, when their enemies were miraculously 
delivered into their hands, to realize that their subjuga- 



i64 FOOTSTEPS OF ISRAEL 

tion in the present instance was not brought about by 
military force. The vision of the servant of EHsha at 
Dothan, when his eyes were opened to see the mountains 
round about full of horses and chariots of fire, showed 
that Israel need not fear the armies of her enemies, 
however formidable they might appear to be. Her divine 
protection had been proved so often and so decisively, 
that there was absolutely no danger to her national safety 
so long as she remained loyal to her covenants. 

It is true, however, of any nation whose moral quali- 
ties are held in subjection to evil, and whose highest 
rule is worldly self-interest, that it will meet even- 
tual defeat and downfall. History furnishes undoubted 
proofs that unless good holds the balance of influence in 
the councils of a nation, and in the thoughts of its citizens, 
its final ruin is inevitable, because of the unescapable 
and omnipresent law that good is all that can endure. 
In the present instance, the Assyrian invasion was the 
occasion but not the cause of Israel's conquest and cap- 
tivity. " O Israel, thou hast destroyed thyself," was 
Hosea's verdict of what had taken place, and his view 
coincides with the lessons of human experience. The 
evils that men do become their captors and executioners, 
while, conversely, the good which men do is their liberty 
and their defense. 

With the brief account of their deportation into As- 
syria, the ten tribes which had constituted the northern 
kingdom of Israel disappear from history ac abruptly and 
as completely as if they had been annihilated. But they 
were not to be annihilated, for Israel's work was not 
yet done. The judgment against her did not call for 
extinction, but for banishment, and for dispersion among 
the nations of the earth ; which obviously means that they 
were not to remain permanently in Assyria, nor to return 
to their own land, but were to go out into other countries. 
It is not difficult for the imagination to accompany them 
in their subsequent wanderings, which were strongly 
suggestive of the wanderings of their ancestors in the 
wilderness, when an improved generation was being 



IN EXILE 165 

fitted to take possession of the land of promise. We can 
see them gradually recovering- from the mesmerism of 
their heathen idolatries, shaking off the cruder super- 
stitions about the nature of Deity, and of His relation 
to man, which they had imbibed from their intercourse 
with the Gentiles, and which had adulterated and defiled 
the purely monotheistic religion of Israel; and we can 
see their eventual awakening to again recognize and 
acknowledge the one God. 

The situation of the people of the southern kingdom 
of Judah was somewhat different. Their immediate 
exile in Babylon was comparatively brief, lasting not 
more than seventy years, and one can glean from the 
Scriptures a reasonably clear understanding of what 
transpired there, and of the circumstances of their re- 
turn. From that time on, with the exception of about two 
hundred years, the Jews have left an almost uninterrupted 
trail through history, so that while they too were finally 
dispersed, they have remained in the world's observation, 
detaining their raqial identity and their national re- 
ligion. Their census can be taken today in every country 
where they have found refuge. They have been unable 
to lose themselves if they would, or to erase the evidence 
of their lineage, or to dissociate themselves from the 
shame and the glory of their past. The preservation of 
this division of the Israelitish race, scattered for twenty 
centuries in nearly every country of the globe, without 
a national head or recognized government, is one of the 
most striking confirmations of prophetic Scripture which 
modern history affords. In view of the literal fulfil- 
ment of prophecy in this notable instance, one not un- 
naturally looks for the same literal fulfilment in respect to 
the other and major portion of Israel, and there is no valid 
reason to believe that the Scriptures w^ill not be confirmed 
in this also until the "final restitution of all things" 
shall be accomplished. 

It was a natural result that the continued disappear- 
ance of the Ten Tribes would eventually divert attention 
to Judah as the only representative of Israel, so that in 



i66 FOOTSTEPS OF ISRAEL 

time the word Jew came to be used as synonymous 
with the word IsraeHte, until practically no distinction 
was made in the general thought between these designa- 
tions. The former word, however, was originally used 
only of the members of the tribe of Judah, or the in- 
habitants of Judea, and was not given any broader 
application until after the captivity; but the distinction 
in correct usage necessarily remains, notwithstanding the 
general custom to the contrary, and this distinction must 
be carefully maintained in order correctly to understand 
the subject of Israel. The mystery which surrounded the 
subsequent career of Ephraim and Manasseh, the birth- 
right house of Joseph, did not dispose of the fact of 
their existence, or lessen the importance of their destiny 
in the world, nor did it make the Jews the sole representa- 
tive of Jacob's seed. The doom of exile which fell upon 
Israel was not declared to be final, nor was she to be 
deprived, except for a time, of her national identity. 
Therefore, while general ignorance of the whereabouts 
of the Israelites may serve to explain the misuse and 
misapplication of the word Jew, the careful student 
will discover that this is not warranted by the Scriptural 
records nor by the facts of history. 

In the sense that he was a descendant of Jacob, a 
Jew was an Israelite; but an Israelite was not a Jew 
unless he was a member of the house of Judah. A 
Calif ornian, for example, is an American, but an Amer- 
ican is not necessarily a Californian unless he is a resi- 
dent of that state. When the division of the kingdom 
drew the line between Judah and Israel, it drew the 
line of distinction between Jew and Israelite, and the 
same national and racial distinction exists today; so 
that when Israel is restored to her former position and 
identity it will not be as Jews, as some mistakenly sup- 
pose. The Scriptures indicate that the restoration will 
find Israel bearing a new name, and that will necessarily 
be neither Israel nor Judah. 

The tribe of Judah did not lose her identity as de- 
scending from Jacob, nor was she ever lost historically 



IN EXILE 167 

or geographically, but she did lose her national unity 
and the possession of her tribal territory in Palestine. 
But Palestine, as a country, never was hers to any greater 
extent than America can be said to belong to California, 
therefore to say that Palestine was the national home of 
the Jews presents only a portion of the facts, and is apt to 
be misleading. An intelligent perception of these dis- 
tinctions is essential in order to understand the relative 
positions of Israel and Judah in the present and future 
problems of the human race. 

It will be remembered that early in the history of the 
two kingdoms, before Judah had herself fallen under the 
spell of idolatry, the Levites separated themselves from 
Israel and united their fortunes with the Jews. The 
presence of the official priesthood, and the possession of 
the national temple, thus gave the southern kingdom a 
decided advantage, but an advantage which depended 
entirely upon the strength of the religious sentiment 
among the Israelites. It proved insufficient to restore 
the unity of Israel, and may even have contributed 
towards weakening the resistance of the northern people 
to the appeal of foreign religious influence. The Jews, 
on the other hand, holding the high place of the national 
religion, the Mecca of all Israel, developed an exagger- 
ated belief of the importance of ecclesiastical formal- 
ities that in time became a stumbling-block to their 
spiritual freedom and progress. 

The temple was a visible token to Israel of the Divine 
presence, as the tabernacle had been before it, and there 
is no tdoubt that its location in their own territory exer- 
cised, for a time at least, a compelling restraint in the 
thoughts of the Jews in face of the steadily increasing 
influence of idolatry. Although the elaborate ritual and 
ceremony of the temple worship appealed most strongly 
to the senses and emotions, and enshrouded the true con- 
cept of God in mysticism, there was that about it all 
which reminded the Jew of God's wonderful dealings 
with Israel. The very thought of the temple, even when 
it was destroyed and but a memory in his exile, brought 



1 68 FOOTSTEPS OF ISRAEL 

before him the cherished glories of his race, so that he 
could say in the words of the Psalmist, " If I forget thee, 
O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning." 

The Jews were apparently more mindful of God during 
the captivity than they had been in Jerusalem, and we 
need not doubt that the Israelites in their Assyrian cap- 
tivity also thought longingly and remorsefully of the 
religion they had betrayed. Without in any sense con- 
doning their infidelity, it seems inconceivable that one 
could be a descendant of Jacob, with a knowledge of 
the sacred traditions and records of his race, and not feel 
that God meant something to him which was beyond the 
power of evil to destroy. It is because of this that the 
banishment of Israel would be corrective rather than 
punitive. Although the vicious elements of the carnal 
mind had apparently overwhelmed and submerged the 
spiritually awakening thought of this race, we may still 
know that whatever is derived from God is imperishable. 
Notwithstanding their vicissitudes, their lapses into error, 
their sheep-like wanderings into the byways of sensual 
allurements, underneath it all they were still the people 
of Israel. The spiritual qualities which they had pos- 
sessed were still there, and it only heeded the tribulating 
process of evil's self-punishm.ent to beat the encumber- 
ing chaff from the precious grain. 

No one who looks at these events from the viewpoint 
of divine revelation, so closely linked up as they are with 
the present and future of human salvation, can suppose 
that the tribulations which came upon Israel, prolonged 
though they were, were intended to end her great mission 
or to blot out her place in human destiny. This mission 
was to be none the less hers because evil had temporarily 
triumphed, or because she had disappeared into an age- 
long obscurity. What are ages to divine Truth! "A 
thousand years In Thy sight are but as yesterday when 
it is past, and as a watch in the night" (Ps. 90 : 4). 

We have read of the seed which had lain hidden in a 
mummy's hand, and which when planted responded to 
the warmth of the sun — that had been shining on during 



IN EXILE 169 

the ages of darkness and concealment — and brought forth 
its increase of grain. And so will it be with Israel. The 
eclipse of her long exile has not signified decay. It only 
means that the " mills of God " have been grinding on 
with their patient exactness. Israel's hard experiences 
have been surely working out the self-destruction but not 
the self-perpetuation of evil, and the spiritual seed of the 
woman has been as unharmed through it all as the seed 
which lay through thousands of years in an Egyptian 
sarcophagus. The tribulations of Israel, as the word itself 
^implies, have been the means of liberating the grain from 
the chaff, the true from the false, and in the ripeness of 
time we shall see the precious seed breaking forth into 
its increase of living grain, warmed by the rays of that 
Light which St. John tells us is God. 

Let us, then, dismiss the too popular delusion that when 
Israel disappeared from the eye of history she lost her 
existence as a nation, or her place in God's plan, or that 
she became merged with races of inferior ideals. Let 
us not believe that the glorious things spoken of her, and 
revealed in her, were as the passing breath of human emo- 
tion, or as the inconsequential happenings of dreams, for 
they were the voicings to human consciousness of the 
Divine presence. They pointed to a spiritual quality of 
thought which could not be dissolved in the furnace of 
sensuality, or be deprived of its vital energy in the shad- 
ows of obscurity. Although Israel disappeared in an 
exile which has apparently been prolonged to the present 
period, the light which was aflame in her, weak and 
flickering though it frequently appeared, was one with 
its divine source, and could not be extinguished by all 
the darkness that ever blinded mortal eyes. 

We feel assured that the inhabitants of Paris, New 
York, or London, or the natives of South Africa, continue 
their round of activity, progress, and experience whether 
we are present to witness it or not. Although human 
beings are transported from one locality to another, or al- 
though they may even pass entirely out of one's earthly 
focus, we still know that they are expressing what they 



170 FOOTSTEPS OF ISRAEL 

are,; irrespective of their environment, and are moving 
steadily on to the fulfilment of their being. By the same 
rule, therefore, we may be assured that, when the Israel- 
ites passed out of the world's notice, or when in other 
lands as the generations went by they even passed out of 
the knowledge of their former identity, they still continued 
to '' carry on " with the best they had. Notwithstanding 
changes of time and place, they were working out the 
destined end and purpose of their race, because these 
outward changes had not separated them from the 
Father, or from the spiritual good which had been in- 
corporated into their national consciousness. Thus they 
would go on and on in their appointed course, because 
they could not escape from what they were, or from 
what they were yet to be. 

The fact evidently is, that Israel in her exile was no 
further removed from her rightful place in the human 
drama than if she had continued her career in the land 
of Canaan. Although Judah has remained out in the 
open, she is apparently no nearer the fulfilment of her 
share in Israel's promised destiny than if she had shared 
the same obscurity. It is not the simple fact of being 
in the eyes of the world that fits one for his work in it, 
but what is being accomplished in one's own conscious- 
ness. Whether the whereabouts of Israel were known to 
the rest of the world or not is a matter of small moment 
beside the question of her moral and spiritual recovery, a 
work that could go on quite as well in one place as in 
another. 

Inasmuch as the government of God expresses the only 
power there is, and operates impartially and universally 
for the good of all men, it necessarily follow^s that there 
was no power operating anywhere to prevent the Israelites 
from recognizing this fact and throwing ofif their sub- 
servience to evil. Wherever they might be, their sense of 
good was still there. The worst that the fiery experiences 
which followed her wrongdoing could do to Israel, would 
be to consume the human satisfaction in sin's delusions, 
and prepare the way for her return. 



IN EXILE 



171 



It is certain that evil cannot destroy any portion of 
God's creation, otherwise man and the universe would 
be in danger of ultimate extinction. The consciousness 
in man which reflects God, and which He acknowledges 
as His own likeness, can neither be atrophied nor de- 
stroyed, but remains to shine forth at every opportunity. 
It should be self-evident that it is not the spiritual side 
of a man's being which sins and suffers, but the mistake 
of a selfhood and mind which God neither fathers nor 
supports. As St. John wrote, "He that is begotten of 
God keepeth himself, and that wicked one toucheth him 
not.'' The son of God, because of his very divinity, can 
neither sin nor be punished, and that man is spiritually 
the son of God was the glimpse of heavenly glory which 
changed Jacob to Israel, and which appears in ever 
increasing volume and emphasis throughout the subse- 
quent Scriptures. 

Races and peoples are differentiated by their mental 
rather than their physical characteristics, and these remain 
and are perpetuated and renewed although individuals 
and generations pass away. The spiritual origin and de- 
velopment of Israel, and the high destiny assigned to her 
in the inspired visions of the prophets, imply the nec- 
essarily temporary nature of her exile, and the certainty 
of her return chastened and purified. We may well be- 
lieve that the nation in whose consciousness came the rev- 
elation of the spiritual creation of man in God's image and 
likeness, and of the consequently false nature of His un- 
likeness, could not be held in continual captivity. The 
perception of the spiritual idea of being which came to 
Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and to the inspired leaders of 
Israel, w^hich moulded and preserved the nation's ideals, 
which illumined the visions of her prophets, and led hu- 
man thought " to where the young child lay," could not 
fail to brinof back this race to the realization of her true 
identity, and to " restore again the kingdom to Israel " 
both spiritually and nationally. 

The comparatively speedy return of Judah to Palestine 
did not indicate that she was less involved in error than 



172 FOOTSTEPS OF ISRAEL 

her brethren in Israel, as one may conclude from her later 
record. The destruction of the temple seems to have 
aroused a more or less sincere desire to return to the 
worship of Jehovah, and the way was consequently opened 
for its rebuilding and for their return to Canaan. It 
would seem, however, that the tendency towards any 
general or sustained restoration of the worship of the 
true God of Israel was soon smothered by the cold eccle- 
siasticism and stern application of the letter of the Mosaic 
law, such as prevailed after the captivity, and which laid 
the mantle of severity and formalism upon the gentler 
impulses which true religious feeling should call forth. 
Judaism exalted the form of religion in place of its spirit, 
and magnified the importance of external observances, 
until the Jewish thought became spiritually benumbed and 
unresponsive to any glow of divine inspiration. Thus 
while it is true that the Jews came out of their Babylonian 
captivity, and have since maintained their identity, they 
entered a spiritual exile from which even the coming of 
the Messiah was unable to recall them, and which still 
holds them as completely as does the national exile in 
the case of Israel. 

This spiritual exile of the Jews is not the least important 
or interesting aspect of Israel's captivity, and of the breach 
between Joseph and Judah. It will probably be found 
that the spiritual exile of Judah and the national exile 
of Joseph will end at approximately the same time; 
and that when Ephraim and Manasseh awaken to their 
national inheritance in Israel, Judah will awaken to see 
her spiritual inheritance and freedom in the " Son 
of David." To lose the sense of one's racial identity is 
not more obscuring than to lose the perception of man's 
spiritual identity as the son of God. The dense ritualism 
of the Judaic religion, with the mystifying influence of 
a localized and tribal Jehovah, so beclouded the spiritual 
perception that when the Messiah came the Jews were 
unable to see him except as an Impostor, showing how 
effectually they had been driven into exile by their false 
concept of Deity. 



IN EXILE 173 

But while the nature of the captivity and exile of 
Israel and Judah is thus contrasted, i^t will be founds 
equally true of the latter that the sufferTngs and persecu-f 
tions which have attended her dispersion will serve to 
grind out the rebellious unbelief which has held her in 
bondage, and prepare her thought to welcome the things 
Avhich belong to her peace, > And who can say that it may 
not be Israel's opportunity to lead Judah into the vision 
of the long expected Christ! The indications are that the 
exile of both Israel and Judah has about spent itself, and 
that we are on the eve of the realization of reunited 
Israel, and the world's recognition of the reign upon the 
earth of her divine King. 

We cannot consistently close this chapter without not- 
ing some of the remarkable events w^hich Daniel records 
of the Bab3donian captivity. The escape of the three 
young Hebrews from the fiery furnace, and of Daniel 
from the lions, are among the most familiar of Bible 
incidents, and furnish additional proofs of the Divine 
omnipresence when men are ready to acknowledge and 
understand it. The failure of the attempt to destroy these 
young men because of loyalty to their God illustrates the 
impotence of evil to interfere w^ith His creation and 
government. The calm and steadfast refusal of these 
Jews to forswear their allegiance to the God of Israel, in 
face of what appeared certain death, is perhaps the most 
sublimely heroic incident of the Old Testament records. 
So clearly did they realize the divine power to annul the 
material law of fire that it was impressed upon the vision 
of the king as a fourth figure in the flames, described 
by him as like "a son of the gods" (Isaac Leeser's 
translation). 

Here again was a demonstration of man's spiritual 
sovereignty over matter, a demonstration so intimately 
associated with Israel's history and development. If it 
were true that man is formed of dust, and therefore in 
subjection to material conditions, these three Hebrews 
would have been as helplessly at the mercy of the fire as 
other mortals, even as men today are taught to believe 



174 



FOOTSTEPS OF ISRAEL 



themselves helpless to overcome adverse physical condi- 
tions, as if the God of Israel were no longer a factor in 
preserving the lives of men. The Scriptures plainly show 
that it was the mission of Israel to bring to human con- 
sciousness the perception of spiritual law, based upon 
man's indestructible sonship with God, and which is 
capable of nullifying the operation and effect of what is 
called material law. It were well if those who are at- 
tempting, and very properly so, to establish Israel's iden- 
tity in the present day, took more account of these things; 
for as surely as Israel began with the first human percep- 
tion of man's spiritual being as the son of God, and gave 
proofs of this truth all along the way, so will she be 
judged and tested in the last days. 

" My God," said Daniel, " hath sent His angel, and 
hath shut the lions' mouths, that they have not hurt me," 
— and what did he mean by " my " God, if it were not 
that the God declared and revealed in Israel was the 
preserver and not the destroyer of men? Isaiah gives a 
vision of the time when the supremacy of Spirit will be 
so understood that the lion will lie down with the lamb, 
showing that the unthinking cruelty of the beast, and the 
unthinking cruelty of material laws, never were a part or 
a feature of God's creation, and will disappear with 
human progress. 

Surely, it must be in these things that we shall find the 
true glory of Israel, and her true identity, and not in 
great number, material prosperity, military dominion, or 
political supremacy. What can be more applicable to 
this whole subject than these words of the prophet Jere- 
miah : " Thus saith the Lord, Let not the wise man glory 
in his wisdom, neither let the mighty man glory in his 
might, let not the rich man glory in his riches: but let 
him that glorieth glory in this, that he understandeth and 
knoweth Me." 



CHAPTER XVII 
" The Times of The Gentiles '' 

Though Babylon should mount up to heaven, and 
though she should fortify the height of her strength, 
yet from Me shall spoilers come unto her, saith the Lord. 
— Jer. 51:53. 

These great beasts, which are four, are four kings, 
which shall arise out of the earth. 

But the saints of the most High shall take the king- 
dom, and possess the kingdom for ever, even for ever 
and ever. — Dan. 7:17, 18. 

JESUS' statement, that *' Jerusalem shall be trodden 
down of the Gentiles, until the times of the Gentiles 
be fulfilled" (Luke 21:24), directs the attention of 
Christians as well as Jews to this subject. In We3^mouth's 
translation the passage is rendered, " until the appointed 
times of the Gentiles have expired." This prophetic state- 
ment clearly referred to a definite period, which appar- 
ently began before and would continue after the events 
of the age in which it was spoken. One might well ask. 
What are the times of the Gentiles to which Jesus re- 
ferred, and what is their prescribed course or " appointed 
times"? 

There seems little doubt that Jesus was thinking of the 
duration of Gentile world-dominion, spoken of in the book 
of Daniel, which began approximately with the taking of 
the Jews to Babylon, an event which completed the cap- 
tivity of Israel. It is not the present purpose to enter into 
the details of the prophetic dates outlined in Daniel; 
suffice it to say that the " seven times " mentioned therein 
as passing over Nebuchadnezzar is interpreted by many 
writers as defining the period indicated by our Master. 
Prophetic time is usually reckoned on the year-day plan, 
with a year of 360 days; and a "time" is understood as 
a year of such days, or 360 years of actual time. Thus 
the " seven times " would be equivalent to 2520 years, 



176 FOOTSTEPS OF ISRAEL 

and are therefore due to end sometime in the near future, 
if they are not, as some contend, already ended. The 
conquest of Jerusalem by British troops in 191 7, and the 
recent establishment of an English protectorate over Pal- 
estine, naturally point to the probability that the times of 
the Gentiles, at least in their external aspect, have about 
run their course. 

In chapters 10 and 11 of Genesis we have the first 
Scriptural account of the division of the human family 
into races and peoples, and although, as time went on, 
these increased through self-division, they retained the 
characteristics of their root origin. Later on in the 
Scriptures, mankind were more broadly divided into Is- 
raelites and Gentiles, and these two divisions of humanity 
continued to flow side by side, one as an almost insig- 
nificant rivulet and the other a mighty stream, with Israel 
spiritually in the ascendancy. The Assyrian and Baby- 
lonian conquests and deportations of the Israelites in- 
augurated the period spoken of by Jesus as the times of 
the Gentiles, or the times when national types of thought 
foreign to Israel would have dominion over the Land of 
Promise and over the people of the covenant. 

After the destruction of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar, 
the name Babylon became a symbol or a synonym in 
the prophetic writings for all that was inimical to the 
spiritual life and freedom of Israel. The original of 
this word in the Hebrew is Babel, or confusion. We read 
in Genesis 10 that Nimrod, the reputed first king of Babel, 
was the son of Gush and the grandson of Ham. Ovid, 
an early Roman poet, as quoted in Hislop's The Tzuo 
Babylons, represents Janus, the '' god of gods," or the 
beginning of gods, as saying, " The ancients called me 
Chaos." Authorities may be found in the same work 
for the following statements regarding the origin of 
Babylon and her line of kings. In the Chaldee, chaos is 
said to be the pronunciation of Gush; thus it would seem 
that Ham's firstborn corresponded with Belus or Bel, 
the mythological founder of Babylon, since Bel signifies 
"the Confounder." Thus if Janus, as is claimed, is 



"THE TIMES OF THE GENTILES" 177 

identical with chaos, Cush, or Bel, it is evident that the 
first god of mythology was identical with confusion, 
and that confusion, or ignorance of the truth, signified 
the beginning of pagan idolatry. 

An ancient representation of the god Janus gives a 
club as his symbol, and this word in the Chaldee means 
to break in pieces, or to scatter abroad. It is interesting 
to note that the word in Hebrew, from which a club 
derives its name, is the same as that used to denote the 
scattering abroad of the people, following the confusion 
of tongues. (Gen. 11: 9.) A club was the symbol of 
physical force, and physical force is what the ancient 
rulers worshipped and sought after, that they might scat- 
ter their enemies and break them in pieces. That this 
was still the Babylonian ideal at the time of the captivity 
is seen in Jeremiah 50 : 23, where the prophet says of 
Babylon, " How is the hammer of the w^hole earth cut 
asunder and broken! " The hammer of Vulcan and the 
club of Hercules show how the worship of physical power 
had permeated the Gentile world; and the line of kings 
that descended from Cush, as well as the later Babylonian 
dynasties, found their greatest glory in wielding this club 
in the effort to bring all the nations of the earth to their 
knees. 

These things indicate to some extent the nature and 
character of the beginnings of the Babylonian race, and 
of the Assyrian race which later came out of it. While 
the true God was being revealed to Abraham, the Gentile 
nations were deifying their material concepts of man 
and woman. The moon-god of the Assyrians, identified 
with the Phoenician Ashtoreth, the Roman Venus, the 
Grecian Aphrodite, and the Egyptian Hathor, was the 
goddess of sensual love. The sun-god of the Babylonians 
was in reality the counterpart of the same deity, and was 
symbolized by a serpent coiled about a shining disc. The 
figure of a serpent or dragon was sometimes placed on 
their military standards. This deification of animality 
thus became the framework of the Babylonian and As- 
syrian national consciousness. 



178 FOOTSTEPS OF ISRAEL 

The mythical deities of other nations were the out- 
growth of Babylonian mythology, and in the last analysis 
they all centered in the worship of the serpent. Cradled in 
the darkness of this spiritual ignorance, and held fast in 
the grasp of superstition and fear, the pagan peoples came 
to regard evil as the supreme power on earth, and the 
procurer of human success as well as of woe and disaster. 
This canonization of the carnal mind eventuated in a 
demonology and a mystic priestcraft whose incubus the 
world has not yet shaken off, but which is doomed to be 
destroyed as not the least evil feature of the times of the 
Gentiles. The sensual religion of Babylon, breathing out 
selfishness and cruelty, and minus any touch of genuine 
goodness, was the antipode of that spiritual inspiration 
which was beginning to be humanly felt in Israel. As 
the latter prefigured, prophesied, and prepared the way 
for the coming of the '' Son of the Highest," the Re- 
deemer of men, so Babylon prefigured and ultimated in 
that curse of diabolism which would bind men forever 
to the beast, and which the apostle called the " son of 
perdition," the " mystery of iniquity," whose end St. 
John so graphically describes in the Apocalypse. 

The nations which sprang from such a source were not 
likely to express even the human ideal of liberty and 
righteousness, much less to illumine the human pathway 
to God. Their ambition was to conquer and oppress, 
never to make free or to uplift mankind. Their highest 
creed appears to have been the right of the sword, in 
their devotion to, which the basest passions of mortals 
were given license. Their worship of the heavenly bodies 
gave them no glimpse of heaven or of divinity, but shut 
out the godlike from earthly vision, and fostered and en- 
couraged the indulgence of inhuman cruelty and unspeak- 
able licentiousness. One can well understand the edict 
of Moses forbidding the Israelites to intermarry with 
these nations, or to acknowledge their gods; and why 
darkness and defilement overspread Israel and Judah 
when they disobeyed his injunction. 

It is not surprising, therefore, that Babylon, where 



"THE TIMES OF THE GENTILES" 179 

evil was endowed with supernatural powers, should be 
the birthplace of sorcery, witchcraft, and the black art, 
which infected the life of the ancient world with their 
baleful influence, and which continued their activities 
under the cover of secrecy or the cloak of religion. In 
the eighteenth century these destructive agencies came 
into more public notice in the so-called discovery of mes- 
merism, under* which name evil claimed to have normal 
and legitimate powers. These occult practices were in- 
terdicted in Israel under penalty of death, and this ban 
was never removed. The use of any forni of enchant- 
ment belonged wholly to Gentiledom and accompanied its 
world-course, but occultism was inherently antagonistic 
to the true idea of Israel, and never had a place in it, 
nor can its more recent activity under the name of hyp- 
notism be reconciled with the Israel of today. No *' rav- 
enous beast shall go up thereon," said the prophet, 
and nothing '' that defileth, neither whatsoever w^orketh 
abomination, or maketh a lie," can make its home with 
God's chosen people. " They shall not be found there." 
The new faces in which necromancy and witchcraft ap- 
pear today belong to the dominion of the Gentiles, as 
surely as did the occultism of Eg}^pt and Babylon. 

Let us not overlook this feature of the restoration. Re- 
store means to bring back to a former state of excel- 
lence or soundness. To restore Israel, then, would mean 
something more than the bringing back of her national 
integrity and self-recognition. It would involve the 
restored consciousness of what she stood for in the be- 
ginning, and the restored fitness and ability to fill the 
place and accomplish the w^ork that had been assigned 
to her. Anything less than this would not be restora- 
tion. She could not bring back her acknowledgment 
of other gods, and yet be restored Israel. She could 
not arise from her grave, as Ezekiel pictures the restora- 
tion, and bring the things of death along with her. 
Speaking of the return of the Israelites this prophet 
says, " Neither shall they defile themselves any more 
with their idols, nor with their detestable things, nor 



i8o FOOTSTEPS OF ISRAEL 

with any of their transgressions." Thus the Israel 
of the latter days will surely have to forswear her 
false gods, her idolatries and adulteries, before she can 
again be known as God's chosen people, or be entitled 
to claim that designation. The New Jerusalem is not 
a myth, nor a mere figure of speech, but the purified 
consciousness of humanity, wherefrom the errors that de- 
filed and betrayed her have been cast out, and wherein 
good alone is known and acknowledged. St. John makes 
it unmistakably plain that sorcerers and idolaters are 
not to be found within that heavenly city. 

The Babylonian empire continued to increase in power 
as Israel declined, and practically reached its zenith 
at the latter's downfall and captivity. The dream of 
(the image, which Daniel revealed and interpreted to 
Nebuchadnezzar, pointed to the constitution of Gentile 
dominion and its final destruction. The four kingdoms 
composing the image are generally understood to mean 
Babylonia, Medo-Persia, Greece, and Rome. The king 
also saw in his dream '^ that a stone was cut out without 
hands, which smote the image upon his feet that were 
of iron and clay, and brake them to pieces. Then was 
the iron, the clay, the brass, the silver, and the gold 
broken to pieces together, and became like the chaff of 
the summer threshing-floors ; and the wind carried them 
away, that no place was found for them: and the stone 
that smote the image became a great mountain, and 
filled the whole earth." 

This dream-prophecy has been literally fulfilled up to 
the present period. These four kingdoms arose, and 
in their day typified the dominion of the carnal mind, 
and perpetuated the Babylonian ideals ; but one after an- 
other their day as world-rulers declined and faded into 
night. "Though Babylon should mount up to heaven, 
and though she should fortify the height of her 
strength, yet from Me shall spoilers come unto her, 
saith the Lord" (Jer. 51: 53). The doom of destruc- 
tion and desolation pronounced by the prophets against 
Babylon and Nineveh was literally carried out. Their 



"THE TIMES OF THE GENTILES'' i8i 

ruins became so completely buried under the debris of 
the passing centuries that even their sites became lost 
to the knowledge of men. 

It has been found that the most enduring achieve- 
ments of the carnal mind cany the germs of their own 
decay, and that its greatest glories eventually pass and 
are forgotten. If it were possible for the nations that 
knew not God to prosper and endure despite their idol- 
atry and their iniquity, there would be no distinction 
between good and evil, and the story of Israel would 
be one of the passing fictions of history; but the glorious 
revelation of the first chapter of Genesis, and the light 
of spiritual truth which continued to shine forth in 
Israel, assured the ultimate downfall of Gentile mate- 
rialism, even though the people of Israel should come 
under its ascendancy for seven times, or for seventy 
times seven. 

There is no doubt that, when Jesus spoke of the tread- 
ing down of Jerusalem by the Gentiles, he used the 
word Jerusalem as typifying human consciousness, as 
well as in a literal sense. The Master would hardly 
have voiced a prophecy of this nature if it had no con- 
nection with his mission and with the w^ork of his 
followers, since it was only the demonstration of his 
teachings that could bring the end of Gentile dominion 
in the earth. As the word Israel, applied to a nation, 
meant something more than racial distinction, so the 
word Gentile had a deeper significance than the distinc- 
tive term for one w'ho was not an Israelite. Naturally 
it is the metaphysical sense of Scriptural statements and 
designations that w^e most need to understand. As Israel 
signified a perception of the spiritual facts of being, the 
word Gentile, or foreigner, signified the opposite or car- 
nal sense of things. Not one city alone, or one nation, 
but the human consciousness was under the oppression 
of the carnal mind, claiming that intelligence, power, life, 
substance, and happiness are material; and this Gentile 
thought, foreign to the true idea of Israel and to human 
salvation^ would keep the human mind in subjection 



1 82 FOOTSTEPS OF ISRAEL 

until the spiritual sense of thing's should be restored, 
and the truth of man's divinity bruise the serpent's 
head. 

Gentile dominion was the expression of autocracy 
in all its aspects. The belief that might is right, and 
that this might is physical, had held the thoughts of 
mortals from the most primitive times, and reached the 
acme of its development in the Babylonian monarchy. 
To become military master of the world was the un- 
scrupulous ambition of that and following ages, and 
the phrase "Gentile dominion" was truly and terribly 
earned and maintained. Brute force was the god to 
whom the Gentile world burned incense, but the *' Con- 
founder" in every case was sooner or later confounded 
and broken in pieces by his own weapons. Egypt 
fought against the God of Israel, and became the con- 
quered dependent of other nations. Babylonia and As- 
syria laid their hands upon the Lord's chosen people, 
taking them into captivity and profaning the temple, and 
their high places became the abode of the owl and the 
bat and the beasts of the desert. Persia helped the Jews 
to rebuild their temple and pemiitted their return from 
exile, and although her power was broken she never lost 
her national existence. Rome gave God's anointed into 
the hands of the Jews to be crucified, and she went down 
and out despite her tremendous power. 

But for all this, Gentile dominion had not yet passed. 
With the fall of the Roman empire, the " seven times " 
had about half their course yet to run. There was still 
*' a time, times, and half a time," which were apparently 
reserved for other phases of Gentile ascendancy. Here- 
tofore the world had been under a military or political 
autocracy, which, in its more general application, came 
to an end with the downfall of the Western Roman 
Empire; but from that time forward, Gentile dominion 
began gradually to take on the aspect of an ecclesiastical 
autocracy, which, in its cruelty and inhumanity, eclipsed 
any military despotism that preceded it. The fourth 
kingdom of Nebuchadnezzar's dream, which coincided 



^'THE TIMES OF THE GENTILES" 183 

with Rome, had simply changed its face; it was still 
Rome, and would so continue to the end of its course^ 
when the whole imag'e and all it stood for would be 
ground to nothingness by the stone cut out of the 
mountain without hands, that is, a kingdom not of 
human origin. 

The Babylon of the Old Testament was the type of 
Gentile dominion in its relation to Israel. The Babylon 
of the New Testament typified the same dominion in 
its relation to Christianity. Athough the second ap- 
peared in history under the name of Rome, the two 
were undoubtedly identical, and were so treated by St. 
John in the Apocalypse. The carnal mind might change 
its spots but its evil nature remained the same, whether 
it held its grasp upon humanity as a false expression of 
government or a false expression of religion. There 
was to be no respite from oppression. The hand of 
ecclesiasticism that fell upon a war-trampled and suf- 
fering race was hard and heavy, and the weary heart 
of humanity groaned under its pressure for twelve hun- 
dred 3^ears. 

That the Roman hierarchy was the counterpart or 
completion of the fourth kingdom of Nebuchadnezzar's 
image, and the fourth beast of Daniel's own vision, 
history grimly testifies. The evidences in its support, 
both internal and external, are too strong and numerous 
to be seriously questioned. A Roman Catholic writer 
of the last century is quoted as saying : " The rise of 
the tem.poral power of the popes presents to the mind 
one of the most extraordinary phenomena which the 
annals of the human race offer to our wonder and 
admiration. By a singular combination of concurring 
circumstances, a new power and a new dominion grew 
up, silently but steadily, on the ruins of that Roman 
empire which had extended its sway over, or made itself 
respected by, nearly all the nations, peoples, and races 
that lived in the period of its strength and glory; and 
that new power, of lowly origin, struck a deeper root, 
and soon exercised a wider authority, than the empire 



i84 FOOTSTEPS OF ISRAEL 

whose gigantic ruins it saw shivered into fragments, 
and mouldering in dust." 

But autocracy in religion, under whatever name, is 
not the expression of God's government on earth. The 
deeds of violence and torture perpetrated in the name of 
religion, the unspeakable outrages committed in her 
name, covering every conceivable form of cruelty, far 
exceeded and outrivalled the worst that has been re- 
corded of Assyrian despots. One has but to read the 
history of the Dark and Middle Ages to realize the depth 
and extent of the infamy of the carnal mind, assuming 
to occupy " the temple of God," and to be His repre- 
sentative upon the earth. 

The stone cut out of the mountain has surely struck 
the feet of the image, but the grinding process referred 
to by Daniel is yet to be completed. The liberation of 
Jerusalem points to the fulfilment of Jesus' prophecy 
in its purely external aspect, but a greater freedom re- 
mains to be won before the times of the Gentiles are 
fully ended, and men come to realize their liberty as 
sons of God. " For the earnest expectation of the 
creature waiteth for the manifestation of the sons of 
God" (Rom. 8:19). 



CHAPTER XVIII 

The Covenant of Prophecy. 

Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the 
prophets; I am not come to destroy but to fulfil. — 
Matt. 5:17. 

And when they had appointed him a day, there came 
many to him into his lodging; to whom he expounded 
and testified the kingdom of God, persuading them con- 
cerning Jesus, both out of the law of Moses, and out of 
the prophets. — Acts 28 : 2^. 

FROiM the beginning- of human discernment between 
good and evil, followed as it naturally was by the 
realization of the necessity for salvation, there has 
been a steady looking forward to something better. With- ' 
out this desire and expectancy for a more harmonious and 
enduring consciousness, prophecy would have found a 
barren and unpromising field for its ministry. Every 
improvement effected in human experience is in itself 
a prophecy of perfection, since the achievement of better 
conditions in any direction not only proves the possibility 
of continuing this progress until the ideal is reached, 
but the certainty of its realization, for the impulsion 
of the race forward has its source in the truth of man's 
original divinity, and will not cease until perfection is 
realizedT; 

In its earlier use in the Old Testament, the word 
prophet signified a spokesman, that is one who was dele- 
gated to speak for God; and although the word was 
later used chiefly to denote a foreteller of future events, 
its original significance naturally remained with it, for 
unless the Hebrew prophets had been so divinely illumined 
that they felt commissioned to speak for God in human 
affairs, their utterances would not have been received 
as bearing the stamp of authority. These men were 
undoubtedly inspired to lift a comer of the veil, and 



i86 FOOTSTEPS OF ISRAEL 

disclose something of the course and destiny of Israel, 
and her relations with the Gentile world. 

The Hebrew Scriptures present in progressive order 
and degree the unfoldment of the truth of divinity. God 
was being revealed to humanity through the only avenue 
available, — namely, the spiritually awakening thought 
which was given the name of Israel. If there had been 
found elsewhere a greater responsiveness to spiritual 
truth, it would naturally have become God's medium of 
revelation, since it was not a question of preference or 
privilege, but of opportunity. The spiritual facts of 
being had been coming to light along the line of least 
resistance, and without this illumination the night of 
materialism would have been without a star to bespeak 
an approaching dawn. It was this star of Israel, the 
star of prophecy, which led the wise men to " the young 
child " at Bethlehem, and which, during the succeeding 
centuries, has ever cheered the watchers on the hilltops of 
Zion. 

If men were more alive to the wondrous messages 
which the Hebrew prophets voiced to the Israel, not of 
their day only, but of our own day and time, there 
w^ould be less indifference concerning this subject. Many 
seem unwilling to acknowledge any connection between 
the prophecies of the Old or the New Testament and 
the present age, assuming that they are chiefly or wholly 
concerned with a remote past or a remote future, for- 
getting that today is the connecting link betv/een yester- 
day and tomorrow. It is our own period of history 
that is linking up the prophetic vision of the past with 
its fulfilment, and which points to the relation of the 
prophets' messages to the political and religious life of 
today. The value of the inspired utterances of the 
prophets is not lessened because they may be denied or 
ignored by those who should be awake to their impor- 
tance, for whatever of God's government is unfolded to 
men will sometime be universally acknowledged. 

To minimize the value or to deny the validity of the 
prophecies indicates a lack of appreciation of the design 



THE COVENANT OF PROPHECY 187 

of the Scriptures, and shuts from view the wonderful 
perspective of a perfected Christianity and a perfected 
humanity, or the perfect understanding of God and man, 
as that towards which the eyes of all peoples have been 
turned in hope, and which the prophets foresaw and 
foretold from Genesis to Revelation. Those who depre- 
ciate the Scriptural prophecies, and by this is naturally 
meant the prophecies that aw^ait fulfilment, should bear 
in mind that the Scriptures are themselves a prophecy. 
The Old Testament was a prophecy of the New, and the 
New Testament is a prophecy of that which is to come 
after. No book of the Bible is complete in itself, but 
points to or implies the coming of that which is to carry 
on the w^ork. What Moses and the prophets accom- 
plished was not final, or independent of relations. They 
filled their parts in a great scheme. Their work fore- 
shadowed the teachings and miracles of Jesus, while he 
in turn pointed to the Comforter for the completion of 
his ministry. The last chapter of the Bible is a glorious 
summing up and amplification of all preceding prophecy, 
and prophecy will continue its God-appointed task until 
the dream of materialism is dispelled, and no sense of 
evil remains to deceive or becloud human vision. 

It may be well here to recall the Master's rebuke of 
his disciples' dullness, after his resurrection, when he 
said, " O fools, and slow of heart to believe all that the 
prophets have spoken! . . . And beginning at Moses 
and all the prophets, he expounded unto them in all the 
scriptures the things concerning himself." And again, 
"These are the words which I spake unto you, while I 
was yet wnth you. that all things must be fulfilled, which 
were written In the law of Moses, and in the prophets, 
and in the psalms, concerning me." It is equally im- 
portant, is It not, if present-day disciples would not be 
dull or slow of heart to believe, that they should also 
understand the things which are written In the Scrip- 
tures concerning the reappearing of the Christ and the 
conditions which are to Indicate Its approach? It should 
"be of some consequence to understand w^hat is to usher 



.i88 iFOOTSTEPS OE ISRAEL 

in the consummation of the story of the past six thou- 
sand years, when the kingdoms of this world are to 
acknowledge the government of God, and bow the knee 
in allegiance to Christ. 

Unless one gets the true perspective of any subject, 
the vision is either limited or indistinct. We naturally 
look to history for the right perspective of Israel's origin 
and development, but we must look to prophecy and 
revelation for the right perspective of her destiny. Her 
history in outline was pre-written in her prophecies and 
in her covenants; all that remained was the filling in of 
details; and the course which yet remains may be found, 
in general outline, in the writings of the prophets. We 
must look beyond today or tomorrow or next year or 
the next decade for the full vision of the glory of Israel 
as the chosen of God; and where shall we find this 
vision indicated save in the prophecies of the Old and 
New Testaments? 

But, one may ask, why this pre-statement of future 
events, with its apparent prearrangement of the fate 
of mortals? Did the Supreme Being provide before- 
hand for the terrible occurrences of history? Did He 
prearrange the times of the Gentiles, the idolatry and 
captivity of Israel, and the betrayal and crucifixion of 
Jesus? Did the divine plan of creation include a place 
for the serpent and the fruits of his deceptions? The 
God of Israel forbid! It is the sophistry of the carnal 
mind which argues that, because sin and suffering, dis- 
aster and death, have attended human existence in the 
flesh, God must have provided and planned for them. 
If this view were to be accepted, it would implicate the 
Almighty in a chain of events down the ages that could 
have its origin only in an inversion of divinity, a thing 
impossible. 

The time has come, surely, for this relic of paganism 
to be banished from the advancing thought of the age, 
for to those who accept it there can be no reasonable hope 
that the universe will ever be free from evil, inasmuch 
as God is revealed to be eternally the same. Although 



THE COVENANT OF PROPHECY 189 

the prophets were surrounded by pagan influences, and 
their manner of speech was largely moulded by the 
primitive traditions of their race, their inspired utter- 
ances did not proclaim a God of good and evil, or of 
love and hate. While a superficial reading of the Scrip- 
tures might lead one to suppose that God inspired the 
prophets to foretell evil, the reverse is the case, as a 
more careful reading will disclose. It should be self- 
evident that good, not evil, constitutes the only possible 
sphere of divine activity; for even omnipotence could 
not hallow an evil deed, or transform revenge into a 
heavenly grace. We are taught that the Messiah came to 
do the will of the Father by destroying the works of the 
devil, not by consenting to them; and the will of the 
Father is as changeless as His own being, however dimly 
it has been perceived or grossly misinterpreted. 

The prophetic gift of the ancient Hebrew seers was 
no more allied to occultism or divination than were the 
marvellous works of Moses to the jugglery of the Egyp- 
tian magicians. Their nearness to God so illumined the 
perception of the prophets, and so enlarged their mental 
focus, that the course of truth and the course of error 
in human consciousness were brought within their view, 
and they uttered as much of what they saw as the condi- 
tions and thought of the age permitted. Speaking after 
the custom of their time and race, they voiced their 
messages as communications from the Lord, and they 
were received as such, notwithstanding the obvious fact, 
as we see it today, that it was their own approach to 
God in spirit that lifted them above physical limitations 
and revealed the secret things. 

The chief event upon which the eyes of the prophets 
were fixed was the ultimate deliverance of Israel, and 
through Israel of the rest of mankind. What the proph- 
ets did not always keep clearly before them was, that 
the oppressor of Israel was not a man or a nation, 
but the human sense of evil; and that deliverance was 
to be brought about, not by the conquest or overthrow 
of nations but by the overcoming of this sense of evil 



190 FOOTSTEPS OF ISRAEL 

in the thoughts of their own people. The conflict in 
human consciousness between the forces of good and 
of evil, personalized as these seemed to them, were much 
in the thought of the prophets; and in their jealousy 
for the vindication of Jehovah, the doom of the op- 
pressor, as they saw it foreshadowed, was not an un- 
pleasant thing for them to picture. 

But the prediction of the doom of their enemies, and 
of the terrible things which were to accompany it, by 
no means implied that they were to take place simply 
because they had been foretold, but because of the 
certainty of the eventual self -punishment and self-de- 
struction of evil, and were to be viewed as proofs of 
the sovereignty, not the vengeance, of God. The spirit- 
ual illumination which enabled the prophets to pierce 
the shadows of futurity unveiled the evil as well as the 
good of the latter days. They saw the onward develop- 
ment in human consciousness of the spiritual idea, and 
its resistance by the carnal mind; but it was plain that 
this resistance would ultimate in its self-destruction, 
since Truth, in its very nature, is irresistible. The woes 
which the prophets foresaw as coming upon the Gentile 
nations, or upon Israel herself, as the case might be, 
were not acts of God, but the reaction of evil upon 
those nations in consequence of their consent to be its 
instruments. 

No enlightened student of prophetic Scripture antici- 
pates the occurrence of disturbing events merely because 
they were foretold, but because they are harbingers of 
the triumph of good in human experience. Jesus de- 
scribed the great commotions that would herald the re- 
appearing of the Christ, but he pointed to them as cause 
for rejoicing, not for dismay. " And when these things 
begin to come to pass, then look up, and lift up your 
heads; for your redemption draweth nigh." (Luke 
21:28.) His words were plainly intended to comfort 
his followers, not in that age only, but in subsequent 
ages, and to stimulate human expectation of his coming. 

The bright vision in the mental horizon of the He- 



THE COVENANT OF PROPHECY 191 

brew prophets was the final restoration of Israel. Be- 
cause the prophets were able to foresee the restoration 
of Israel, in other words the restoration of the Messianic 
idea, they were able to foresee the tremendous commotion 
which the approach of that great event of all the ages 
would produce in human consciousness. But Jesus under- 
stood better than the prophets why these disturbances 
would come, therefore he was able to read them as the 
signs of the near approach of human redemption. He 
saw them as the pangs oj a world awakening from the 
sleep of materialism, to behold and to welcome the dawn 
of spiritual being. 

It was to find a spiritual sense of being that Abraham 
left his parental home, and having found it, he laid thereon 
the foundation of Israel. The prophets, ever mindful 
of this spiritual foundation, looked forward to the time 
when the knowledge of the one true God should fill 
the earth, and that '* day of the Lord " was the converg- 
ing-point of their prophecies. All the truths uttered in 
the Scriptures necessarily lead to that point, and when 
they are fully proved, as all truth must sometime be, 
the covenant of prophecy, spanning the age-long inten^al 
like a bow of promise, will be abundantly fulfilled in 
Christ's universal kingdom. 

The Apocalypse, which begins with the statement 
that it is the " Revelation of Jesus Christ," devotes many 
chapters to the description in metaphor of the events 
which were to occur during the period before the Millen- 
nial Age, but there is always the glow of the bright 
picture at the end, and which is the chief feature and 
object of that revelation. This drawing back of the 
curtain of futurity had reference only to human prog- 
ress, or mortal's emergence from a false concept of 
life into the true, and was intended to encourage those 
who were looking forward and upward. It is self- 
evident, before a realization of the infinity of good could 
become humanly universal, that the human sense of 
evil, of that which denies God's allness, would have to 
be seen as unreal ; and this is plainly what is to constitute 



192 FOOTSTEPS OF ISRAEL 

"the end of all things," that is, of all things false. It 
is very clear that this process of human emancipation 
can be perfected only at the full appearing or reappear- 
ing of the Christ. 

The prophets of the restoration had a glimpse of this 
I culminating event of history, and they saw also the dis- 
turbing influence of that event upon the carnal mind. 
They foresaw the tremendous conflicts which would take 
place in human consciousness between the flesh and Spirit 
before the former would be finally overcome, or laid 
off, as the apostle terms it. These disturbing conflicts 
were desirable only because through them it was possible 
for the human sense to rise higher. The stubborn deter- 
mination of the carnal mind to retain its influence in 
human affairs has resisted every step of spiritual prog- 
ress, and has been the underlying cause of national 
turmoils and world-wide disorder; but when the ability 
to separate good from evil came to human consciousness, 
the doom of this so-called mind became unquestionable. 
The onward course of the true idea, although apparently 
slow, has been irresistible; and while the prophets fore- 
saw that the conflict would go on for ages, they also 
foresaw and foretold the absolute triumph of that idea, 
and, as inseparable from it, the overthrow of the 
oppressor. 

This prophetic gift or faculty followed the line of 
spiritual enlightenment in Israel. By it Noah became 
aware of the outcome of the evils of his time, and the 
means of his escape. Abraham's perception of the unity 
of God, and the facts of His spiritual nature and pres- 
ence, revealed to his consciousness what the develop- 
ment of that perception would be in its relation to the 
human race. He foresaw his seed, as spiritually named 
and perpetuated in Isaac, become a mighty people which 
would bless all the earth, not on account of material 
greatness, but because of their spiritual knowledge of 
God. This prophetic vision was to Abraham as God's 
covenant, and it was so designated and accepted by the 
Jsraelites, His experience was renewed in Isaac and 



THE COVENANT OF PROPHECY 193 

Jacob, thus confirming *'the covenant which God made 
with our fathers, saying unto Abraham, And in thy seed 
shall all the kindreds of the earth be blessed." 

All the inspired prophecies of the Scriptures are but 
different chapters of God's covenant with men. They 
all point to one ultimate fulfilment, although they deal 
individually with various phases of human progress out 
of error. They are links in that one great chain of 
prophecy which runs throughout the Scriptures, and 
which finds its ultimate fulfilment in the universal re- 
demption of the race. While many of the prophecies 
outwardly relate to material disturbances or commotions, 
it is always the self-destruction of error that is typified 
or indicated. As human consciousness approaches nearer 
to the discernment of God's infinite nature, it increas- 
ingly awakens to the deceptiveness of His unlikeness, 
and to that degree the evil in human belief dissipates into 
nothingness. 

It is sometimes argued that, if these things were to 
occur anyway, wherefore the purpose of foretelling 
them. Peter spoke of prophecy as "a light shining in 
a dark place," or, as in another version, " in dimly lighted 
places." Thus prophecy undoubtedly served to illumine 
the long ages of paganism through which human con- 
sciousness passed, and is still passing, in its travail with 
the carnal mind. It was apparently in line with the 
divine plan that the human pathway should be thus illu- 
mined by the light of what lay ahead, just as a distant 
light guides the traveler on his course. It rested with 
mankind to throw off the yoke of evil and destroy its 
works, and this required spiritual illumination. It could 
not be accomplished in the dark, " when no man can 
work." It needed, and still needs, the revelation of the 
promises and prophecies to give rest and inspiration 
to human faith for the long journey to the Heavenly 
City. 

But there was another and equally important part 
which prophecy was to fill in the working out of human 
salvation, and that was to supply Truth's affirmative 



194 FOOTSTEPS OF ISRAEL 

to error's negative. The carnal mind was continually 
pouring its suggestions into human consciousness, deny- 
ing the law which prohibits the knowing of evil, denying 
man's spiritual origin and divine sonship, denying his 
immortality and ability to overcome the flesh. The 
tendency of these immoral suggestions would be to in- 
duce such a subservience to sensuality as to sink the race 
into spiritual oblivion, and the inspired prophecies and 
promises of the Hebrew Scriptures wxre voiced and 
preserved in human consciousness to counteract this 
propaganda of error, and to prepare the way for the 
coming of the Lord. 

It is impossible to conceive the difference in human 
history and progress if the prophecies had never been 
uttered. If one could subtract the influence of Hebrew 
prophecy from the character and lives of the Master and 
his disciples, of the great men who succeeded them, or 
from the thoughts and conditions of our own time, would 
we find that they had served no good purpose, and would 
have been better unsaid? Would we look forward with 
the same assurance of God's reign upon the earth, and 
the enthronement of love in the hearts of men, if the 
prophetic Scriptures had been a blank, and we were 
without the record of their fulfilment up to the pres- 
ent time? Would Jesus have found the same place in 
the thoughts of mortals without the confirmation of 
prophecy in his advent and experience? If we would 
hesitate to obliterate their place and influence in the 
work of the past, shall we not be glad to accord the 
same importance and value to the prophecies which are 
still awaiting their fulfilment, standing, as we seem to 
be, upon the very threshold of that fulfilment? 

Jesus' indorsement of the prophecies was so unquali- 
fied that those who acknowledge the authority of his 
utterances have no ground upon which to belittle the im- 
portance of what yet remains to be fulfilled. " Surely I 
come quickly," is the message of the last of the Biblical 
prophecies, a message that should open the eyes and 
quicken the understanding of all who are watching the 



THE COVENANT OF PROPHECY 195 

signs of the times. The most significant feature, how- 
ever, of the conditions pertaining to the so-called latter 
days will not be found in world-wide disturbances or in 
fearful events, but in the manifestation again of that 
divine power which so mightily accompanied the Messi- 
anic teaching and ministry. 

Every glimpse of the glory that was to come, of the 
certainty of evil's overthrow, and the triumph of right- 
eousness, which came to the prophets and was recorded 
by them in the mental life of Israel, declared God's 
eternal fidelity to His own changelessness, and was 
plainly not of human origin or invention. As St. Peter 
wrote : " For no prophecy ever came by the will of 
man : but men spake from God, being moved by the 
Holy Ghost" (Revised Version). These prophecies 
have shone like beacon lights over the turbulent sea 
of human existence as constant reminders of God's 
covenants of peace and safety. 



CHAPTER XIX 
The God of Israel 

. And God said unto Moses, I AM THAT I AM. — 
Ex. 3 : 14. 

Unto thee it was shewed, that thou mightest know 
that the Lord He is God; there is none else beside 
Him. — Deut. 4 : 35, 

This then is the message which we have heard of 
Him, and declare unto you, that God is light, and in 
Him is no darkness at all. — I John i : 5. 

THE remarkable history of the Hebrew nation, as 
recorded in the Scriptures, her many miraculous 
experiences, her distinguished place among other 
races, and her unique destiny in prophecy, were all due to 
her truer conception of God, and not to anything superior 
in herself. Other nations had their own particular 
deities, but they were the outgrowth of superstition and 
imagination and were as far removed from any helpful 
relationship to the needs of their worshippers as intelli- 
gence is removed from non-intelligence. That this was 
clearly recognized by the Israelites is evident from such 
passages as these : " For what nation is there so great, 
who hath God so nigh unto them, as the Lord our God 
is in all things that we call upon Him for?" "Who is 
so great a God as our God ? " " We know that an idol 
is nothing in the world, and that there is none other God 
but one." 

This practical nearness of the God of Israel to His 
people was a feature that pertained to no other race. 
The absolute oneness of Deity, His inseparable unity with 
His creation, and His unfailing readiness to supply 
human need when sought in sincerity, were what differ- 
entiated the "living God" of Israel from the mythical 
gods of the Gentiles. These characteristics belonged to 
Him alone, and we should remember this, not only in 



THE GOD OF ISRAEL 197 

thinking of the God of Israel, but in thinking of Israel 
herself, her history and her destiny, because it was what 
she knew of God that gave Israel her peculiar place 
among the nations. It was what she knew of God but 
did not obey, that left her a prey to her enemies; and 
an awakening love for the God of her fathers is all that 
can restore her to her covenant heritage. 

Darkness and mystery have ever enshrouded the 
human concept of Deity. While everything visible points 
to an origin or creator, there is nothing to indicate the 
what or the w^here of this great Unknown. The allegory 
of Eden illustrated the crudeness of primitive thought 
in attempting to account for the origin of man, but there 
is nothing inspirational about the dust of the ground 
as a medium for the expression of God's immortal 
thoughts, and men have never learned to know Him 
that way. Jesus rejected this idea of the creation when 
he taught that men must be born again, that is, reach 
a new and spiritual sense of being, before they could 
have a place in God's kingdom. 

Following mortals' recognition of the unlawfulness 
of evil, came the desire for salvation, and there began 
a movement in human consciousness to find God; ever 
since, in one way or another, mankind have continued 
that great quest. According to the allegory of Eden, 
this movement began in the consciousness of woman, 
and brought forth the prophecy regarding the enmity 
between her seed and the seed of the serpent, and this 
movement is to continue until evil shall "deceive the 
nations no more." 

The lives of the great Hebrew patriarchs had been 
moulded and exalted by their higher ideal of Deity, so 
that the God spiritually perceived and made known by 
them has never been superseded by the gods of other 
nations, but is still acknowledged throughout the civilized 
world. The transformation which came to Jacob at 
Peniel brought divinity nearer than ever before to the 
thought of humanity, and imparted to that revelation 
a warmth and a tenderness that have never faded, but 



198 FOOTSTEPS OF ISRAEL 

which still make the God of Israel the name ty which 
Deity is best known, not only as the God v/ho was wor- 
shipped by the nation of Israel, but as the God who 
walks and talks with men today. The Messiah later 
glorified Him as the Father, a term which naturally 
includes the spiritual identity of men as sons of God. 

The provable character of the God of Abraham, Isaac, 
and Jacob was early recognized. He was so real to 
these patriarchs that they could hear His voice. Moses 
discovered that God could be absolutely and literally 
relied upon, under all circumstances, when He was 
sought with a pure heart. There was not much said 
then about waiting for a hereafter in which to know 
Him. They looked for His help in their present condi- 
tions and environment, and they knew it would be forth- 
coming, no matter how great the need, or of what nature 
it might be, so long as they fulfilled their part of God's 
covenant. 

It was, undoubtedly, this demonstrable truthfulness 
and goodness of the God of Israel that made Him the 
" God above all gods." It is also strikingly obvious that 
without this practical or demonstrable feature the He- 
brew religion would have been as devoid of spiritual life 
or of real service as were the religions of paganism. 
This point cannot be emphasized too strongly, for it is 
the vital element concerning Israel, her religion, his- 
tory, and destiny. It was the recognition of man's 
intimate relation to God, as practical rather than theoret- 
ical, which constitutes the chief value of the Hebrew 
Scriptures, that prepared human thought for the coming 
of Christ Jesus, and that so wondrously vivified and 
glorified his ministry. At no point in her history can 
the subject of Israel be rightly treated independently of 
her relation to God. Her very nationhood, as we have 
seen, came into being to be the vehicle by which a knowl- 
edge of God might eventually be brought to all mankind. 
Eliminate this great purpose of her existence, and the 
subject of Israel would lose its interest and value. 

The God of Israel is the designation by which the 



THE GOD OF ISRAEL 199 

concept of Deity, as one and supreme, became impressed 
upon human consciousness, and this term, or any of its 
Scriptural synonyms, will not be exchanged for an- 
other until the " new name " spoken of in the Apocalypse 
shall be revealed. It is significant that Israel is the only 
nation to which God's name has been attached, because 
it was in Israel that the truth about Him was first known 
and demonstrated. 

The religious concepts of what we call the pagan 
nations, or the Gentiles, rested upon a human basis, hence 
the attempts of these nations to embody their concepts 
of Deity in material forms or images, and after the 
pattern of human and animal types. The apprehension 
of the nature and presence of divinity which came to 
the Hebrew patriarchs was, however, so purely a thing 
of consciousness, that they recognized the folly as well 
as the impossibility of attempting to give it outline and 
form. The divine Spirit was to them something to be 
felt and adored, not to be humanly seen save in effect 
upon life and character; hence the command given 
through Moses against the making of graven images to 
represent their concept of Deity. The Israelites were 
reminded that they saw no manner of similitude on the 
day when the Lord spake to them in Horeb, and that any 
attempt to make an image of their God would result in 
disaster ; and thus it always proved. 

The First Commandment plainly exalted Deity above 
all comparison with human thought or things. As the 
prophet Isaiah pointed out with unanswerable finality, 
there was nothing beside Him to which He could be 
likened. God existed by Himself alone, the one I AM 
THAT I AM ; and a perception of this truth is in itself a 
commandment against all forms and phases of idolatry. 
The knowing of something beside good was all that man- 
kind were warned against, and in itself and in its con- 
sequences it constitutes the w^hole of evil. Hence the 
sinfulness of the idolatry which has beset all people of all 
times. The Scriptures give the God of Israel a position 
that admits the truth of nothing else. " I am God, and 



200 FOOTSTEPS OF ISRAEL 

there is none else." The entire course of Israel was de- 
signed to be the development of this ideal of Deity, until 
nothing unlike Him remained in consciouness. What else 
could Israel mean as the chosen of the Lord? 

Naaman the Syrian dimly recognized something of 
this all-inclusiveness when he said, '' Now I know there 
is no God in all the earth but in Israel," because he knew 
that the gods of other nations could not have healed him 
of his disease. This idea of Deity was the dominant 
note in the sacred writings of the Hebrews. They knew 
there could be but one power capable of the great things 
which had been done in their history, and it was this 
recognition that made idolatry in Israel so "exceeding 
sinful." In their defection from the one God, they 
were sinning against the light of revelation which had 
been given them, hence the heavy price they were re- 
peatedly called upon to pay. 

Although the Israelites suffered severely in conse- 
quence of their idolatries, it was only because they had 
themselves opened their experience to the entrance of 
evil. The God of Israel was not as a mortal, to be 
swayed back and forth by human caprices. Such a state- 
ment as, " God is angry with the wicked every day," 
simply expresses the lowest human belief about Deity, 
and is manifestly unjust to His divine nature. The 
prophet Isaiah declared His thoughts to be as high above 
those of mortals as are the heavens above the earth, and 
this seems the only rational viewpoint for an enlightened 
age. We should form our thoughts of God from the 
highest point of revelation, and not from the lower plane 
of anthropomorphism, the outgrowth of the crudest su- 
perstition. 

The prophet Isaiah represents God as saying, "My 
thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways 
My ways." How, then, can one describe Deity from 
any human standpoint? Mortals can reach a true per- 
ception of the nature of God only through goodness, 
and goodness is a divine, not a human, quality. It is 
the carnal mind that has argued to both Israelites and 



THE GOD OF ISRAEL 201 

Gentiles that Deity is human as well as divine, and has 
sought to excuse or justify its own evil propensities on 
that ground; but the God of Israel is not an amalgama- 
tion of opposite qualities, as were the gods of the 
heathen. The source of the inspiration which animated 
and illumined the Hebrew patriarchs and prophets was 
not human but divine, and could not have embodied the 
qualities which make mortals mortal, unless He were 
Himself mortal. 

In reading the Biblical records, it should be remem- 
bered that what Israel received of the truth about God 
came through human avenues, and that these human 
revelators were still, to some extent, under the influence 
of racial traditions and habits of thought, and the 
phraseology of their messages was naturally somewhat 
colored thereby; so that, in some instances, their state- 
ments, as they have been repeatedly copied and trans- 
lated, apparently imply a human side to God's character. 
From the standpoint of primitive mortals, evil, in all 
its forms and phases, appeared to be so tangible and 
universal, that they did not suppose for a moment that 
Deity had nothing to do with it. Believing them- 
selves to be a compound of spiritual and sensual quali- 
ties, having a sense of both good and evil, they reasoned 
backward and assumed the Creator of man to be similarly 
endowed. To be aware of a power and presence besides 
good appeared so natural to them that they did not ques- 
tion the incongruity of the belief that God possessed the 
3ame dual consciousness. 

But the God of Israel could never be anything dif- 
ferent from what He eternally is; and is not, and never 
was, what imperfect human beliefs have pictured. It 
were morally and spiritually impossible for Deity to re- 
deem mortals from evil, if He also believed in its reality 
and power ; for in that case their thoughts would be His 
thoughts, and their ways His ways. " Your iniquities," 
said Isaiah to the Israelites, "have separated between 
you and your God, and your sins have hid His face from 
you " ; and the Scriptures imply that all men must some- 



202 FOOTSTEPS OF ISRAEL 

time overcome their false knowledge of anything beside 
Him in order to become conscious of man as God's 
likeness. 

It is apparent from the records that the revelation 
of the Divine nature came gradually to the conscious- 
ness of Israel, and that, in the earlier periods of her 
history, God's infinite goodness was not clearly seen or 
acknowledged. To the thought of the early Israelites, 
it was God who sent evil upon their enemies, or upon 
themselves as the case might be; they did not then con- 
ceive of Him as the perfect Father, yet the God of Israel 
was not a being whose nature changed with changing 
ages; He was the same in the time of Abraham as in the 
days of the Messiah; the only difference was that Jesus 
knew Him better. 

Israel denoted that point in human consciousness 
where the light of divine revelation was beginning to 
shine upon the darkness of mortal ignorance and super- 
stition, but the full dawning of the "day of the Lord" 
had not then come. Moving about in their mental dark- 
ness, believing it to be the natural condition of their 
existence, primitive mortals imbibed the belief that it 
appeared the same in the sight of Deity as to themselves, 
until this belief became fixed in the thoughts of man- 
kind. If they knew of evil as a dread and mighty 
power, why should not God know this also? If they 
saw themselves bound in sorrow and affliction, God must 
surely see them in the same way. Would not every- 
thing, the evil and the good, appear the same to Him 
as to themselves? 

This view of Deity is one of the densest shadows 
that has lain across human vision because it has hidden 
from humanity the true perception of God's absolute 
perfectness; but we learn from the Master's exposure 
of the devil, or evil, as a liar, that its arguments and 
suggestions must be reversed to find the truth. There- 
fore, for men to know evil makes them unlike God; 
and this is the verdict of experience and enlightened 
reason. It was an unfathered evil sense, which came 



THE GOD OF ISRAEL 203 

not forth from God, that assumed to see and know 
something beside Him; then to affirm that God is 
conscious of a reahty and being beside Himself, or 
that He is aware of a creation in addition to His 
own, would be equivalent to affirming that Deity Him- 
self entered the deception of the serpent, and believed 
a lie. 

In a moment of great illumination, the prophet said 
of God, '' The darkness and the light are both alike to 
Thee, and the night shineth as the day." That is to 
say, to the Divine consciousness there is neither dark- 
ness nor night, neither evil nor error. If human sense 
beheld the universe to be full of God's glory, as it surely 
is, or if men knew God so perfectly that only good was 
present in their thoughts, there could be to them no 
consciousness of aught else. Then shall we say that 
God does not yet know Himself perfectly, and is not yet 
aware of His own omnipresence and omnipotence, that 
we practically endow Him with the distorted and finite 
vision of mortals? From these logical and unavoidable 
conclusions, it is inevitable that human thought and 
understanding must sometime rise to the recognition 
that God, to be God, can know good only, and be con- 
scious only of light. " In Thy light," said the Psalmist, 
" shall we see light," — not darkness, since, in the words 
of St. John " in Him is no darkness at all." 

This is without doubt the most important point in- 
volved in man's understanding of Deity. The earlier 
thought of Israel was too immature to grasp the facts of 
God's perfection in all their significance ; and in the light 
of subsequent progress, we know that the limited con- 
cepts which they handed down in their traditions, and 
which became embodied in their sacred literature, did 
not include the most or the best that could be known of 
Deity, nor are we justified in regarding them as complete 
statements of truth. Some of the later prophets received 
such glimpses of the Divine being that they were inspired 
to utter things beyond ordinary human comprehension, the 
full import of which they themselves probably did not 



204 FOOTSTEPS OF ISRAEL 

perceive. While the Biblical writers sometimes spoke of 
God as if He were a man, the highest sense of what 
they were endeavoring to teach does not so reveal Him, 
and it is the highest, not the lowest, thought of God 
which we must have in mind to understand the vital 
meaning of their messages. In reason, we cannot read 
parables and symbolic pictures or metaphors as literal 
statements of truth, else our ideas of Deity will be more 
human than divine. 

It should be clearly apparent that to personalize the 
being of the Infinite, as we are accustomed to think of 
persons, or to bring divinity down to the level of human 
beings, springs from the idolatry that acknowledges more 
than one God, a position whose logical effect is to limit 
the presence of good to the absence of evil, instead of 
repudiating evil on the ground of her omnipresence of 
good. All that Deity can consistently recognize or ac- 
knowledge in His creation, or as His creation, is that 
which expresses Himself, His own nature and character, 
else He would be a transgressor of His own law in ac- 
knowledging other gods, a position that is unthinkable 
and therefore untrue. It is impossible to define God as 
the one and only source of intelligence, and then think 
of Him as crossing the mental line between good and 
evil, between the true and the false, and holding con- 
verse with the carnal mind, and making terms and con- 
ditions with it. 

The one God whom Israel acknowledged has been 
conceived and written of differently in different periods 
of her history, according to the beliefs and needs of 
the time. Moses saw Him as the changeless identity of 
being, the I AM THAT I AM ; while to the Israelites in 
their bondage He appeared as their liberator, and the 
punisher of the Egyptians. When they came to enter the 
land of Canaan, He became the fighter of their battles 
and the destroyer of their foes. To the Philistines who 
took possession of the Ark of the Covenant, He was the 
sender of disease and pestilence. To Naaman the Syrian, 
to the Psalmist, to the Master and his disciples, God 



THE GOD OF ISRAEL 205 

was one " who healeth all thy diseases." To St. John, 
God was Love. 

Matthew thus wrote of the "son of David," the 
promised deliverer for whom Israel had looked and 
waited : " And great multitudes came unto him, having 
with them those that were lame, blind, dumb, maimed, 
and many others, and cast them down at Jesus' feet; 
and he healed them : insomuch that the multitudes 
wondered, when they saw the dumb to speak, the maimed 
to be whole, the lame to walk, and the blind to see ; and 
they glorified the God of Israel." Let us note the con- 
nection. These people at once recognized that the God 
of their fathers, not Beelzebub, was the power behind 
these great things, and divine healing was there affirmed 
as an indelible sign of Israel. No matter what may 
be our particular phase of religious belief, if we accept 
the records of Israel we cannot evade or deny the fact 
that the divine healing of disease has woven itself into 
the very fabric of her history. It first appeared at the 
healing of Sarai's barrenness, when the so-called laws 
of nature, supposed to produce infirmity and decay, were 
proved to be not the laws of God. And from that re- 
corded beginning it continued to be repeated, in varying 
forms, during the course of Israel, until it was so abun- 
dantly exemplified in the ministry of Jesus that he made 
it a definite and enduring sign while Israel should en- 
dure, — "And these signs shall follow them that believe." 

Let it be said again, that it was the work of Israel 
to make God known, and to establish His way upon the 
earth, and nothing else. Without the spiritual and lit- 
eral witnesses of God's presence and power, there were 
no means by which humanity might become acquainted 
with Him, and lay off mortality for immortality. "Ye 
are My w^itnesses, saith the Lord, and My servant whom 
I have chosen: that ye may know and believe Me, and 
imderstand that I am He : . . . I have declared, and have 
saved, and I have shewed, when there was no strange 
god among you : therefore ye are My witnesses, saith 
the Lord, that I am God." 



206 FOOTSTEPS OF ISRAEL 

Does Israel today realize what it means to be witnesses 
of her God, of His oneness and allness, of His power 
and goodness, as in the former times? When Israel 
ceased to witness to her God, she became a false witness 
for strange gods, and was taken into captivity; and 
she will return from that captivity only when she re- 
sumes her place as His witness. 

The obvious meaning of witness is to bear testimony. 
Men are constantly bearing testimony in their lives to 
what they know of God, to their ignorance of Him, or 
to their indifference about Him. When the Israelites 
in Egypt turned their thoughts towards God, Moses was 
raised up to lead them out of bondage, and he bore re- 
markable testimony to the divine power in delivering 
this people. And during their sojourn in the wilderness, 
and in the land of promise, they were witnesses of His 
goodness and greatness, and their testimony is still ac- 
cepted as valid. And on through the times of the 
prophets, of Jesus and the apostles, God was not alto- 
gether without His witnesses in Israel; and this rule 
cannot fail in the last days, when the people of Israel 
are to be brought out of their obscurity into the realiza- 
tion of man's divine sonship. 

All along the footsteps of Israel we may find the signs 
which prove the reality of her God, and these signs have 
never lost their interest or their intense significance. 
Expunge this testimony from the Bible and from human 
history, and what would there be upon which to build 
our hope or sustain our faith ? Without them how would 
one verify the truth of the Scriptures, or what would 
there be left to lift it above the realm of mere earthly 
history? If God's covenants had proved to be but a 
form of words, if His promises had not worked out 
true under test, if it had not been demonstrated over 
and over again, that the way to God was abundantly 
open to the honest heart, the Bible would be the greatest 
mockery of human need in all the Avorld's literature. 

Everything dear to human welfare and aspiration has 
rested upon the proved faithfulness of the God of Israel; 



THE GOD OF ISRAEL 207 

and what her mission has been in past ages, is hers in a 
larger sense today. The witnesses and the signs must 
be known and seen in our own day and generation. Israel 
cannot be resurrected to her true identity and destiny by 
virtue of the wonders wrought in Egypt more than thirty 
centuries ago, or by the works of the prophets, or by the 
many glorious proofs of Gods power in the days of 
Christ Jesus. As surely as the same sun that shone on 
the Hebrews in Egs'pt still gives light today, so surely 
the same God of Israel must be found glorifying His 
name before His people and before the heathen. 

Let this feature of the restoration of Israel be given 
the place of first importance in the consideration of 
this subject, otherwise we shall miss the grand purpose 
of that event. But this shall not be. God w'ill come 
into His own as the God of Israel as certainly as all 
true Israelites will come into their own as children of 
the Highest, and the earth will rejoice because of them; 
for in Israel, in her witnessing of the one God, shall all 
the nations of the earth be blessed. 



CHAPTER XX 
The Rise of Christianity 

Then took he him up in his arms, and blessed God, 
and said, 

Lord, now lettest Thou Thy servant depart in peace, 
according to Thy word: 

For mine eyes have seen Thy salvation, 

Which Thou hast prepared before the face of all 
people ; 

A light to lighten the Gentiles, and the glory of Thy 
people Israel. — Luke 2 : 28-32. 

Of this man's seed hath God according to His promise 
raised unto Israel a Saviour, Jesus. — Acts 13 : 23. 

ISRAEL had been exiled from her home for seven 
hundred years, and the land given to Abraham and 
to his seed for an inheritance had passed under the 
dominion of the Gentiles. The first three of the kings 
described in Nebuchadnezzar's dream had lorded over it 
in turn, and it was now under the heel of Rome. The 
people of the northern kingdom of Israel, after their cap- 
tivity in Assyria had run its course, had, for the most 
part, found their way into adjacent countries, or were 
slowly trekking through Europe toward the isles of the 
sea which are now known as Great Britain; while those 
of the southern kingdom of Judah which returned from 
their exile in Babylon remained in Canaan as vassals of 
their conquerors. 

We shall not attempt to follow the history of the 
Jewish remnant during this troubled interval. The voices 
of the prophets had been silent for five hundred years, 
but their impassioned exhortations and admonitions, both 
before and after the exile, were not wholly barren of 
results, in that the open indulgence of idolatry was dis- 
continued. The spiritual quickening which had been 
felt in this nation was the natural outcome of her recep- 



THE RISE OF CHRISTIANITY 209 

tion of divine revelation, and however overwhelming 
might seem the resurging tide of materialism, it could 
only obscure for a time what had been achieved in her. 
The necessity for progress, stronger than evil's delusions, 
would in due season ensure the ebbing of this tide, and 
the emergence again to human view of the spiritual line 
of Israel. 

In his memorable prophetic analysis of his sons' des- 
tinies, Jacob had designated Judah as the holder of the 
sceptre, which was fulfilled in the setting up of the 
Davidic line to be an enduring dynasty; and carrying 
this into the spiritual realm, the later prophets foretold 
the coming of the Messiah from among David's de- 
scendants. Not, however, with blare of trumpets nor 
with worldly display did this Prince of the house of 
David make his appearance, but in the lowly fashion of 
a babe, heralded, it is true, by songs of angels, but hu- 
manly unnoticed more than other babes, except for the 
adoration of the shepherds, and the homage of the three 
unknown w^se men, guided thither by a heavenly con- 
stellation. As the child Moses was divinely preserved 
from the jealous fear of Pharaoh, for the deliverance 
of the Israelites from Egypt, so the child Jesus was pro- 
tected from the murderous fear of Herod, that he might 
lead Israel and all mankind out of their captivity to the 
carnal mind. 

The star, or conjunction of stars, which brought the 
Magi to Bethlehem, betokened the advent of that to which 
the spiritual experiences of the Hebrew patriarchs and 
prophets had clearly pointed. A new order of things 
was dawning in Israel through a woman's receptive 
recognition of the fatherhood of God and the spiritual 
sonship of man, a recognition which points to the fun- 
damental truth of Christianity. "The woman" was 
disproving the age-long claim that the life of man is de- 
rived from matter, and her discernment of the spiritual 
idea of creation had so far developed as to be made cog- 
nizable to the human sense in the babe Jesus. No wonder 
that the watching shepherds caught the songs of angels, 



2IO FOOTSTEPS OF ISRAEL 

for heaven had come nearer to earth than it had ever 
been. 

In his Gospel, Matthew accepts Isaiah's prophecy to 
the "house of David," — that a virgin should conceive 
and bring- forth a child, and that his name should be 
*' Immanuel," that is, God with us, — as being fulfilled 
in the birth of Jesus, a conclusion which was doubtless 
derived from the Master himself. In the Gospel of Luke 
the spiritual conception of Jesus is treated in greater 
detail, and if we accept his subsequent record of the 
events in the life of our Lord, there is little room to 
question the authenticity of his opening narrative. Ma- 
terialistic philosophy has persistently scouted such a 
fundamental departure from its established and revered 
canons, for the simple reason that it has no apprehension 
of spiritual realities, and was then and is now unpre- 
pared to admit the existence or operation of the spiritual 
law of creation. 

The age which witnessed the advent of Christianity 
was not, however, characterized by any greater degree 
of spirituality than is the thought of the present day. 
There were but a few men and women sufficiently awake 
to recognize the significance of Jesus' nativity, and that 
it was in direct fulfilment of the prophecy uttered in 
Eden. The religious thought in Judah was too ma- 
terially deadened to hear the song of the angels, or to 
perceive even dimly the great glory of what was taking 
place; but Mary, the chosen Mother in Israel, recognized 
it in adoration, and pondered it in her heart. She stead- 
fastly recognized Jesus' "high calling" even through 
the ordeal of the crucifixion, not because of any maternal 
instinct, but because she knew that her child was "of 
a truth " the Son of God. 

If we have carefully followed the footsteps of Israel 
up to this point, we shall be ready to see that Isaiah's 
prophecy of the virgin mother did not in any sense con- 
travene the nature and order of divine revelation, how- 
ever radically it opposed the conventions of the human 
mind. Looking out across the mental distance, the 



THE RISE OF CHRISTIANITY 211 

prophet saw the Redeemer of mankind, appearing in the 
flesh but not of it, as the embodiment or idea of the truth 
of man's spiritual sonship. 

The scepticism which denies spiritual causation nat- 
urally discredits the record of Jesus' supersensual 
origin, but this same scepticism has been carefully ex- 
plaining away all that is humanly miraculous in the 
Scriptures, from the passage of the Israelites through 
the Red Sea down to the spiritual healing of the present 
day. This class of criticism has proved itself to be 
neither constructive nor inspiring, and leaves mortals 
helpless and hopeless in the grasp of materiality, with 
no brighter or higher vision of life than animated dust. 

"And the angel answered and said unto her, The 
Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of 
the Highest shall overshadow thee: therefore also that 
holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called 
the Son of God." And the angel said to Joseph also, 
'' that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Ghost." 
Long afterward Paul asked of Agrippa concerning 
Jesus, " Why should it be thought a thing incredible 
with you, that God should raise the dead?" And why 
should it be thought incredible with other mortals that 
the highest revelation which had come from God to 
man, that spiritual impartation which was to be the 
Saviour of the world, should appear to human sense 
without the impulsion of animality? The law of cor- 
ruption had no dominion over Jesus, because he had 
been virtually raised from the dead before he was born ; 
in other words, he was not bom of "corruptible seed." 
If we are to accept the testimony of angels, such as we 
find in the legendary records of the prophets, and which 
have come to us out of the dim ages of tradition, we 
cannot consistently turn from this testimony in relation 
to the coming of the promised Messiah, recorded two 
thousand years later, simply because this testimony contra- 
dicts human law and precedent. Has not every step of 
human progress towards the understanding of God been 
a growth in spirituality, and therefore a step away from 



212 FOOTSTEPS OF ISRAEL 

the laws and precedents of the carnal mind? In what 
other way could the woman, the purest type of thought 
expressed in the human, bruise the serpent of sensuality 
except by attacking its claim to be the creator of man, 
and to be indispensable to the expression of life? 

But however much the lower or higher critics might 
dispute the unprecedented manner of his coming, it was 
a fact that the hope and glory of Israel, the light that 
was to " lighten the Gentiles," was here, and the world 
could never be the same again. Enough of truth had 
been perceived to ensure the final leavening of the human 
mass. The first act in the restoration of Israel had 
begun, a new day had dawned for the race, as indicated 
in a new reckoning of time; and however long and 
troubled might be the interval, the final act in the great 
drama of Israel, namely, the spiritualization of human 
consciousness, was from that time assured. 

It soon became apparent that Jesus was not the kind 
of deliverer which the Jews were expecting. They were 
not looking for a Saviour from sin, but from Roman 
oppression. As in the days of Saul, they were still ask- 
ing for a king after the manner of other nations, hence 
they were not prepared to recognize the real King of 
Israel when he came. What did they want of a man who 
rebuked them for their sins, and who was supposed to be 
the son of a carpenter, when they desired a princely 
descendant of the great David? 

Jesus' advent was the natural outcome of that spiritual 
sense of things of which Israel was designed to be the 
human vehicle or expression. Although what Jesus 
taught and practised far transcended the best which had 
preceded him, it was the advancing spiritual thought 
from Eden to Canaan, and from Abraham to the last 
of the prophets, which led up to and made possible the 
appearing of the Messiah. This appearing was a light 
to lighten the whole world, that is to bring to men the 
freedom of spiritual enlightenment. It was not, there- 
fore, the setting aside but the glory and crown of Israel, 
and was not succession as much as fulfilment. 



THE RISE OF CHRISTIANITY 213 

The Judaic religion had become Httle more than a 
strict observance of empty forms and ceremonies. It 
cannot, therefore, be looked upon as either the founda- 
tion or the forerunner of Christianity. The Jews were 
frankly not w^atching for a spiritual Redeemer. They 
were for the most part satisfied \vith their religious be- 
liefs and practices, and, to that extent, w-ere not open 
to the appeal of the great Teacher. Their utter failure 
to respond to his message was a sore disappointment, 
and called forth Jesus' touching lament over Jerusalem, 
but Judah's spiritual apathy towards the Christ was by 
no means representative of Israel. Their cruelly tragic 
rejection of the Messiah, of him whom God had sent to 
be the king of Israel, served more than anything else 
to isolate them from their brethren, and caused them to 
be a reproach and a byword among the nations where 
they were afterwards dispersed. 

Jesus was thoroughly familiar with the history of his 
race, and his thought turned yearningly to those who 
where then in exile. " Other sheep I have which are not 
of this fold," he said, " them also I must bring." And 
again, " I am not sent but to the lost sheep of the house 
of Israel." These w^ere not the narrow views of one who 
could see nothing good outside of his own nation, but 
of one who realized that his message would be accepted 
only by those spiritually prepared for it. It was plainly 
because of this, and not from any bigoted or prejudiced 
sense, that he at first refused the appeal of the w^oman 
of Syro-Phoenicia. It is evident, from the impartial 
nature of truth, that the Messiah did not belong to one 
people more than to another; but the thought of Israel, 
on account of her origin and experience, was more 
spiritually susceptible, and therefore more open or re- 
ceptive to divine revelation, than the thought of other 
nations. It was solely because of this that the Christ 
came to humanity through the consciousness of Israel, 
and pertained more particularly to her, or to the spiritual 
status of thought which she typified. To Israel alone 
had come the revelation of the oneness of God, and while 



214 FOOTSTEPS OF ISRAEL 

as a nation she had again and again proved disloyal to 
her heavenly trust, and was even then enduring the 
penalty for her idolatries, she was still the guardian of 
that revelation. 

Jesus announced that his mission was '^ to seek and to 
save that which was lost." If we read this in conjunc- 
tion with his statement that he was " not sent but to 
the lost sheep of the house of Israel," it will be seen that 
his mission had to do especially with Israel, although 
it is apparent that he was speaking more metaphysically 
than literally. If his meaning was that he had come to 
seek and to save persons, he would naturally have used 
the word those or them instead of that, but he made no 
attempt to find the lost Israelites, or to bring them back 
to their own land. His work plainly had to do with 
Israel's spiritual significance and purpose in their relation 
to human salvation. He came to save or to restore that 
^vhich had been temporarily lost sight of in Israel, and 
that was the spiritual sense of God's omnipresence and 
omnipotence, the spiritual perception of man as the son 
of God. 

If the Israelites had not relinquished what had been 
revealed to them of God, they would not have lost their 
national independence and freedom. As has been pointed 
out again and again in these pages, it was her splritua! 
knowledge or perception of truth that alone had made 
Israel the chosen of God, that had gathered her into a 
distinct people, and that was her only means of becoming 
a blessing to the world. When she was enticed from 
this position, and despoiled of her chief possession by 
the deceptions of the carnal mind, she lost her unity and 
Identity as a people and became scattered among the 
Gentiles. This state of things had existed for seven 
hundred years. Did, then, the coming of the promised 
Messiah have nothing to do with bringing back these 
"lost sheep"? Was the great Son of David chiefly 
concerned with the few Jews who remained in Palestine, 
and who would have none of him? 

If this were to be the case, how was Jesus to be "the 



THE RISE OF CHRISTIANITY 215 

glory of Thy people Israel," as Simeon said of him? Or 
how was he to fulfil the declaration of Nathaniel, " Thou 
art the King of Israel," an acknowledgment which the 
Master neither denied nor rebuked ? When the disciples 
asked him after the resurrection, "Lord, wilt thou at 
this time restore again the kingdom to Israel ? " he did 
not reprove them, nor did he imply that that had nothing 
to do with his work, but he enjoined them to leave the 
question of time to the Father. His reply plainly indi- 
cated that at the proper time her kingdom would be re- 
stored, but his special mission was to redeem the Israel 
of Spirit, knowing that in due course this would result in 
the literal restoration. 

There is no doubt that Jesus had talked with his 
disciples about these things else they would not have 
questioned him as they did, but what they apparently 
failed to grasp was, that the spiritual restoration in 
Christianity would have to be established first. From his 
reference to the " times of the Gentiles " and their ful- 
filment, we may gather that Jesus was familiar with 
Daniel's prophecies, and was aware that these times had 
still a long course to run, but he saw also that, running 
concurrently with the Gentile course would be the new 
leavening force of Christianity, before whose influence 
the whole structure of Gentile dominion would finally 
crumble. 

Another point of vital interest, in connection with the 
long interval before Israel would come into her own 
again, was Jesus' intimation that the Messianic prophecy 
was not to be completely fulfilled in his present ministry. 
Jesus foresaw that his teachings would not be fully 
understood, and that a second appearing of the Christ 
would become necessary before his kingdom could be 
finally established in the earth. The intimate relation 
of that event to the restoration of Israel, as plainly im- 
plied in both the Old and New Testaments, points to 
the necessity of an adequate and just knowledge of this 
subject if one would have a just appreciation of the 
scope and purpose of the Hebrew Scriptures. 



2i6 FOOTSTEPS OF ISRAEL 

Throughout his whole career Jesus proved himself 
to be a true Israelite, departing in no wise from the 
best traditions and ideals of his race. He not only con- 
firmed "the promises made unto the fathers," as Paul 
said of him, but he confirmed and amplified the proofs 
of God's power which were so distinctively associated 
with Israel's history. He did this to such an unprece- 
dented degree that he asked the Jews to believe in him 
for what he did, if they could not believe in him for 
what he was. He linked the human appearing of the 
Christ with the early development of Israel when he said, 
*' Abraham rejoiced to see my day, and he saw it and 
was glad," and then he announced the eternal nature of 
the truth which he represented, saying, " Before Abra- 
ham was, I am." 

The birth of Jesus, as recorded in the Gospels, was 
unquestionably the most momentous event, not only in 
the history of Israel but of the world, and is generally 
acknowledged as the beginning of a new era for hu- 
manity, and a new starting-point for the dating of time. 
The old chronology began with the '' first Adam," and 
rested upon a wholly sensuous conception of life; the 
new chronology began with the spiritual conception of 
man as the son of God, as having no other father or 
source of life, and rested upon the regeneration of hu- 
manity as expressing the true sense of existence, even 
upon the earth. 

The evidence of God's spiritual fatherhood, which the 
birth of Jesus afforded, superseded the mythology of a 
material origin of life, and turned human attention 
towards the possibility of attaining a perfect and endur- 
ing consciousness of being. The transforming nature 
and effect of Christianity had in some degree been ex- 
perienced, and this fact could never be obliterated from 
the consciousness of humanity, neither could its mighty 
significance be ever wholly set aside. The new idea in 
Christianity had its roots in divine reality, and the with- 
ering blasts of evil could not destroy its vitality. It were 
not possible that the spiritual light which had been seen 



THE RISE OF CHRISTIANITY 217 

in Israel, and which shone out in its greatest glory in 
the advent and ministry of Christ Jesus, could be put out, 
although it might again flicker feebly in the densely 
materialistic atmosphere of coming centuries. The actual 
truth of man's spiritual being, the truth of Spirit's 
supremacy over the flesh, had been seen and tangibly 
felt in the life of Jesus of Nazareth, and the false 
philosophy of evil could no more destroy the spiritual 
gain which had come to men, than darkness could destroy 
a single ray of light. 

Jesus was aware of all this. " Heaven and earth," he 
said, " shall pass away, but my words shall not pass 
away." And again, " I beheld Satan as lightning fall 
from heaven." '' What have we to do with thee, Jesus, 
thou Son of God? " cried the devils before he cast them 
out. What, indeed ! But Jesus had this to do with them, 
that his mission was to destroy evil and its works. To 
this end he taught men the necessity of regeneration, or 
their awakening to the spiritual truth of being. He laid 
bare the metaphysical secret of evil influence by showing 
that men are defiled by their own base thoughts, and 
not by something external to their consciousness; but 
he did not leave the matter there. He exposed the 
falsity as well as the subtlety of the serpent. He de- 
clared of the devil that he " abode not in the truth, be- 
cause there is no truth in him." Why, then, should men 
accept its arguments or obey its suggestions, since they 
were not true? 

This was the master-stroke which pierced the serpent 
in its most vulnerable point, namely, its unreality, and 
clearly indicated the line along which Christianity would 
have to go in redeeming mankind. " Ye shall know the 
truth," Jesus had said again, " and the truth shall make 
you free" — free from what? From what else could 
a knowledge of the truth free a man except from his 
belief in what is false, or from what else do men need 
freedom? Truth frees from the lie, when the truth is 
understood, but from nothing else. Christianity could 
not be more than the truth about God and man, and it 



2i8 FOOTSTEPS OF ISRAEL 

needed to be nothing more in order to make men free 
from error. The Messiah did not come to the world with 
a human doctrine, or a creed, or a set of dogmas. He did 
not come to teach men that there is a good and a bad 
creator and power, for that beHef had been accepted for 
ages before him, and was the nightmare which had so 
long oppressed the race. He came to rouse men from 
this nightmare, to teach them of the perfect Father and 
the perfect Son, to bring back the lost consciousness of 
man in the image and likeness of God. 

There was very plainly no devil, no debasing bondage 
to the flesh, no law of suffering, in the truth which Jesus 
said would make men free. He was in the world to 
demonstrate the infinite goodness of the Father, and he 
did this by destroying the evidences of evil, disease, and 
death. He was here to free men from everything which 
God did not make or authorize, from the fear, the sin, 
and the mortality of the fleshly sense. And he did all 
this, not as a privilege peculiar to himself, or as due to 
a power exclusively his own, but as the natural result 
of his understanding of God, and of his obedience 
thereto. More than this, he designated the " signs fol- 
lowing," enumerated in the last chapter of Mark, as the 
proof of Christianity in all after ages. 

Although in the literature of other races the coming 
of a Deliverer had been foretold and described, more 
or less after the manner of pagan mythology, in Israel 
alone were these prophecies fulfilled. In Israel alone, 
out of all the nations, the one true God had been made 
known in a long series of signs and wonders, too often 
repeated to be classed as coincidences, and too diametri- 
cally opposed to the assumed laws of nature to be set aside 
by any material inference or deduction. These were the 
real heralds of Christ's coming, and they will continue 
the distinguishing mark of Israel's mission to the end. 



CHAPTER XXI 
The Woman Driven to the Wilderness 

I beheld, and the same horn made war with the saints, 
and prevailed against them — Dan. 7 :2i. 

Let no, man deceive you by any means : for that day 
shall not come, except there come a falling away first, 
and that man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition. — 
II Thess. 2 '.3. 

And to the woman were given two wings of a great 
eagle, that she might fly into the wilderness, into her 
place, where she is nourished for a time, and times, and 
half a time from the face of the serpent. 

And the earth helped the woman, and the earth opened 
her mouth, and swallowed up the flood which the dragon 
cast out of his mouth. — Rev. 12 : 14, 16. 

THE supreme tragedy in the history of religion was 
the crucifixion of Jesus at the instigation of the 
Jews. The God-crowned Prince of her royal line 
was insanely set at naught by Judah, and executed as a 
criminal and an impostor, but his teachings and example 
have remained the greatest spiritual force in human con- 
sciousness, and are destined so to remain, until the res- 
toration of Israel shall be fully accomplished. 

It was soon apparent that the spirituality of the new 
religion came too strongly into conflict with the passions 
and appetites of men to find a smooth and unobstructed 
course. History records that every effort to exalt the 
spiritual above the material has been stubbornly and 
viciously opposed by the animal nature of mortals. The 
natural outcome of practising Jesus' teachings would be 
the subjugation of sensuality, and mankind generally 
have not yet found themselves ready to undertake this ; 
hence the resistance which every spiritual movement has 
encountered, not only from its open antagonists, but from 
the materiality of its own professed adherents. 

The new religion, in virtually setting aside the rites 
and ceremonies of the old, looked upon as sacred from 



220 FOOTSTEPS OF ISRAEL 

time immemorial, and in requiring repentance and ref- 
ormation as the price of salvation, was plainly not ac- 
ceptable to the religious prejudices of the Jews. While 
there continued to be many and notable exceptions, they 
were not sufficiently numerous to conclude that the Jewish 
branch of Israel would be readily Christianized. Follow- 
ing the destruction of Jerusalem by Titus, the Jews 
rapidly lost what semblance of national existence they had 
retained, and became dispersed among the nations as 
had been foretold by the prophets. All hope for the 
establishment and promulgation of Christianity thus lay 
between the Gentiles and the scattered tribes of the 
northern kingdom. Would the latter, chastened by their 
experiences, again resume the great task of carrying on 
the line of the woman, a task which Judah blindly repu- 
diated when this line came so gloriously to light in her 
very midst in the advent and life of Christ Jesus? 

There seemed little to warrant the expectation, if such 
there were, that the outside nations were to be the spir- 
itual successors of Israel, and become God's light-bearers 
to humanity. The thought of the Gentiles had been 
nurtured in the darkest religious superstition, and al- 
though many became touched by the promise and appeal 
of Christianity and embraced its teachings, it was ques- 
tionable whether the Gentile type or quality of thought 
would furnish any permanent avenue for establishing 
and promulgating the new faith. On the other hand, 
from her earliest beginnings, Israel had been assigned 
the great task of proving to the world the existence and 
goodness of the one God, and this had been repeatedly 
confirmed at later periods of her history. If the He- 
brew prophecies were true, there is no doubt that the 
work of Christianizing humanity belonged primarily to 
Israel. 

Paul said of Jesus that he was "a minister of the 
circumcision for the truth of God, to confirm the promises 
made unto the fathers," and the promises made unto the 
fathers included the fulfilment of Israel's destiny. In his 
defense before King Agrippa, Paul said, "And now I 



DRIVEN TO THE WILDERNESS 221 

stand and am judged for the hope of the promise made 
of God unto our fathers : unto which promise our twelve 
tribes, instantly serving God day and night, hope to 
come." The great promise made unto the fathers was, 
that in Israel, that is, in the spiritual understanding of 
God which had been committed unto her, all the families 
of the earth were to be blessed. In speaking thus, the 
apostle was not unmindful of the fact that Judah had 
utterly repudiated the Messiah, and that for many cen- 
turies Israel had been an outcast in foreign lands, an 
unknown people, without national unity or identity; but 
he was confident that God's plan for His ancient people 
would not miscarry, and that through the Christ her 
work would yet be accomplished. 

It is not too much to assume that during the long 
period of her exile Israel was being prepared for her 
great work. The problem of human regeneration is not 
to be stated in terms of solar time, but of spiritual awak- 
ening. Whether it would occupy two thousand years or 
ten thousand years to teach Israel the folly of her idola- 
tries, and to bring her back, in the full sense of the word, 
to her allegiance to the one God, is relatively tmimpor- 
tant. In the nature of things, Israel's backsliding and 
consequent punishment would necessarily be temporary, 
and in these fiery experiences only her errors could be 
destroyed. The revelation of the oneness of God which 
had come to her, and which she had in part grasped, 
could not be extinguished by the moral weaknesses and 
failures of the nation. This revelation came to Israel 
because an opportunity and a place was there found for 
it, and although human error might aftenvards seem to 
magnify itself to the heavens, it could not accomplish 
the recall of divine revelation, reverse the progress of 
the truth in human consciousness, or remove the place 
which God had found to set His name there. Let the 
centuries and the millenniums go by, let the heathen rage, 
and vain things occupy the stage; the true Israel was 
only waiting to take up her appointed task at the right 
time. 



222 FOOTSTEPS OF ISRAEL 

Paul was undoubtedly mindful of these things when 
he preached Christ to the Gentiles, but he knew also that 
there was no respect of persons with God. The Israelites, 
because of their past blessings and privileges, did not 
have a private way, nor the right of way, to the under- 
standing of Deity. The way to God was open to all 
who were ready to depart from evil, whatever might be 
their nationality. The apostle had made it plain that in 
the truth about God and His universe, there was neither 
distinction nor discrimination between Jew and Gentile; 
and on that comprehensive spiritual basis he invited all 
who were ready to enter the heavenly Jerusalem. 

The universality of the spiritual appeal of the new 
religion was made evident at Pentecost when men of 
differing nationalities understood what was said each in 
his own language. The Gentile nations which had been 
contiguous to Israel, or which had come into close asso- 
ciation with her, were not entirely ignorant of the nature 
of her religious ideals, nor of the remarkable events 
which had distinguished her history. They knew of 
the wonderful deliverances which the God of Israel had 
wrought for His people, and they were quite as likely 
as the Jews to accept the works of Jesus as of divine 
origin. This was illustrated in the exclamation of the 
centurion at his crucifixion, " Truly this man was the Son 
of God." Although the nature of the pagan religions 
was in no way allied to the new faith, the best in every 
man only awaits the first genuine divine touch to spring 
into activity. Those who have awakened to an honest 
desire for a higher experience than materiality affords 
are open to the message of Christianity, and Christianity 
finds no other opening into human hearts, whether they 
be Jews or Gentiles. 

In his vision at Joppa, Peter was taught that in God^s 
sight nothing is common or unclean; and on that broad 
platform of a common humanity and a common divinity, 
he forthwith preached Christ to all who would hear. As 
a result. Christian churches soon sprang up in Rome, 
Antioch, Corinth, and other Gentile communities, until 



DRIVEN TO THE WILDERNESS 223 

the growth of the new reHgion was sufficient to attract 
the attention of the imperial authorities. Jealous of its 
rising influence, unwilling to lose her hold upon the super- 
stitious thought of the people, and the power to dictate 
what they should worship, Rome attempted to extinguish 
Christianity, both by proscription and persecution. Al- 
though these attempts were carried out with the utmost 
cruelty, they only served to give the new religion a 
stronger foothold, and to develop a more fearless spirit 
of loyalty to conscience. The Christians steadfastly re- 
fused to abandon their allegiance to God at the instiga- 
tion of human authority, a state of mind which Rome 
did not understand, and blindly failed to respect. The 
First Commandment was enunciated to human conscious- 
ness amid such fearful commotion that even Moses said, 
" I exceedingly fear and quake " ; and the carnal mind 
has met the spiritual demands of Christianity with the 
same fierce resistance. 

But the open antagonism of Rome w^as the least for- 
midable enemy wath which advancing Christianity had 
to contend. More dangerous because more subtle and 
unsuspected in their source were the dissensions which 
arose among the Christians themselves. While they were 
ready if need be to face the torture or the lions rather than 
disown their faith in Christ, they too easily succumbed 
to the carnal elements in their own nature. The apostles 
had earnestly exhorted them to have the same mind 
that was in Christ Jesus, to put aside bickerings and dis- 
putes, and to be charitable and forgiving towards each 
other, but their disagreements over technicalities and 
non-essentials continued and widened. Notwithstanding 
Jesus' warning, that a house divided against itself could 
not stand, factions arose and refused to be reconciled. 
Christianity was of such a nature that attacks from with- 
out could never succeed in overthrowing it : its real foes 
were and always have been those of the Christian house- 
hold. 

Well did the great Teacher say that mortals had to 
deny themselves in order to be his disciples. When the 



224 FOOTSTEPS OF ISRAEL 

spirit of the Christ came to be regarded as secondary in 
importance to the estabHshment of humanly formulated 
doctrines and creeds, the vital essentials of Christianity 
were left unprotected, for the enemy within is ever iden- 
tical in origin and spirit with the enemy without. The 
great danger in this situation lies in the fact that it is 
seldom realized by those most responsible for it. The man 
who built his house upon the sand was doubtless unaware 
of the danger until the testing-time of storm and flood. 
Those who sought to build the Church of Christ upon 
the foundation of human opinion, creed, or authority, 
with the internal conflicts which these inevitably entail, 
were probably unconscious of the insecurity of such a 
foundation, although later ages saw the wreck of these 
unstable structures. 

It should be obvious that the seed of the woman does 
not bring forth the same fruit as does the carnal mind. 
The Christ-vine bears the fruit of the Spirit, but of 
nothing else. " For whereas there is among you envy- 
ing, and strife, and divisions, are ye not carnal?" asked 
Paul of the Corinthians. The schisms and breaches in 
the early Church, as in every movement intended to 
redeem mankind, were prompted by the enmity of evil : 
they have never borne the nourishing fruit of the Spirit, 
or stimulated humanity to the love of God or man. The 
warnings of Peter and Paul, and the entreaty of John 
for brotherly love, were not mere formal precepts and 
exhortations, they were called forth by repeated breaches 
of the fundamental law of Christianity. The early 
Christians were ready to endure martyrdom for the sake 
of their adopted religion, but, like their brethren of 
today, they were not as ready to endure the ordeal of 
following Christ in the denial of self. 

During the fierce persecutions which were directed 
against the adherents of the new faith, the primitive 
Church felt the impelling necessity of keeping the lamp 
of spirituality trimmed and burning, but a period was 
approaching when this impelling necessity would be less 
keenly felt, a period in which the carnal mind would 



DRIVEN TO THE WILDERNESS 225 

make overtures of peace to Christianity, and the warfare 
with the flesh enter its most critical stage. Would the 
young Church rise to the occasion and preserve herself 
from defilement, or would she yield to the lure of worldly 
prestige and popularity? 

In the meantime the carnal mind had been striving to 
deprive humanity of the freedom to "know God aright 
which was embodied in the Messianic teaching, and it 
was seeking to accomplish this by an insidious paganiza- 
tion of Christianity. Whenever a more spiritual concept 
of God and man has appeared on earth, this carnal sense 
has immediately attempted to fasten its tentacles upon 
it, and to strangle the awakening better sense. It has 
ever sought to counteract human progress by insistently 
holding thought to finite and humanized concepts of 
Deity, and of His relation to man. According to the 
allegory of Eden, it led mortals to believe that a knowl- 
edge of evil w^as characteristic of Deity, and therefore 
a thing to be desired, thus plunging humanity into the 
darkness of materialism, and the terror of an angry God. 
It led Abraham to believe that God required the sacrifice 
of his son's life, a program which, if carried out, would 
have sent the patriarch back into the paganism out of 
which he had been called. It flooded Israel with the 
religious delusions of her heathen neighbors until she 
was carried into captivity and lost sight of her spiritual 
inheritance. W^as this experience to be repeated? 

The concept of God as cruel and vindictive towards 
man, unless means were found to appease His wrath, 
arose from the grossest superstition, and found expres- 
sion in religious practices which went to the length of 
sacrificing human beings for the propitiation of their 
deity. Abraham was evidently familiar with this bar- 
baric rite, for he was sorely tempted to show his loyalty 
to his new idea of God by the sacrifice of his best be- 
loved son, but the better sense of divinity which had 
been quickened in him prevailed, and he discovered that 
God did not require the murder of Isaac, either as a 
proof of his own fidelity or as a propitiatory ofTering. 



226 FOOTSTEPS OF ISRAEL 

The patriarch, however, compromised with the crude 
behefs of his time by retaining the sacrifice of animals 
as a sacred rite, and this primitive custom became 
forth w^ith a feature of the Hebrew rehgion, which the 
IsraeHtes, in their simphcity, assumed to be of divine 
institution. 

In both the Old and New Testaments we may learn 
the fallacy of the belief that animal sacrifices have any 
spiritual value, or that they are in any sense acceptable to 
God. Although transplanted into the soil of Israel, this 
custom remained what it was, the product and relic of 
a barbaric age; it was never a factor in revealing or 
maintaining man's true relation to his Creator. The 
human mind, frankly stubborn in its materiality, and 
correspondingly disinclined to exchange it for spiritu- 
ality, instinctively sought a substitute for its own self- 
sacrifice, and a scapegoat upon which to lay the burden 
of its own sins, a weakness w^hich is native to the Adamic 
race, but which was not indigenous to the regenerative 
ideals of Israel, and certainly had no place in the spir- 
itual idealism of Christianity. 

In his zeal for a corrupt and outworn Judaism, and 
his hatred of the new^ teaching, Caiaphas, the high priest, 
conceived the idea of offering Jesus as a sacrifice. " It 
is expedient for us," he said, " that one man should die 
for the people, and that the whole nation perish not." 
The Hebrew mind was already imbued with the belief 
in vicarious atonement, for it was the essential element 
in the practice of animal sacrifices which their nation had 
copied from heathen religions, and Caiaphas appealed to 
that paganish belief with the vicious purpose of getting 
the Founder of Christianity out of the way. The high 
priest's proposal meant a reversion to the days of human 
sacrifices, and its adoption and execution by the Jews 
brought upon them the just condemnation of an enlight- 
ened humanity. 

Looking at it from this distance we can see that the 
suggestion of Caiaphas was only the beginning of the 
carnal mind's attempt to paganize Christianity, for it 



DRIVEN TO THE WILDERNESS 22y 

not only found a response in the thoughts of the Jews, 
but in after days it bore fruit in the thoughts of Chris- 
tians themselves, until the belief that Jesus was offered 
as a vicarious sacrifice for the sins of others became in- 
corporated in the doctrines of Christendom. When 
fairly and fearlessly examined, one cannot evade the 
conclusion that the acceptance of this doctrine is a virtual 
endorsement of the inhuman practices of paganism, and 
that it springs from the same false conception of Deity. 
The beloved Teacher of Israel was not a scapegoat for 
humanity, and it is unjust to the Father to regard Him as 
a party to the tragedy on Calvar}^ The abhorrent prac- 
tice of offering human sacrifices to appease the anger of 
the gods has been rightly condemned by the advancing 
thought of the race; but the teaching that the sacrifice 
of Jesus was necessary to placate an offended Deity, or 
to reconcile Him with sinful humanity, is on a level with 
the, worst phases of paganism in its darkest age. 

Was the seed of the woman, which had blossomed into 
such abundant promise in the life and ministiy of Christ 
Jesus, to become a victim of the serpent's enmity, and 
were the blessings which his revelation of God as the 
Father held for mankind to be lost in the crude savagery 
of a pagan sacrifice? This was a momentous question. 
It is true that Jesus was offered as a sacrifice, but it 
was on the altar of the carnal mind's hatred of the spir- 
itual truth which he taught, and was of a nature to ap- 
pease the wrath of devils, not of Deity. Indeed, the latter 
belief was obviously self-contradictory, since anger, by 
its own testimony, is not a godly attribute. The theory 
that the murder of the great Nazarene expiated the sins 
of mortals is but a repetition of pagan superstition in 
Christian terms, and has done more, perhaps, than any 
other one thing to deaden human conscience to the 
necessity of individual atonement and reformation. 

The sacrifice of the human Jesus on the cross was as 
palpably futile to relieve mortals of their own moral 
responsibilities as was the blood of a bull or a sheep to 
absolve the Israelites from their transgressions. It is the 



22^ FOOTSTEPS OF ISRAEL 

sacrifice of their animality and sin, not the life of animals 
or of men, which God requires of mortals, and this it is 
certain no vicarious offering can provide. In his cru- 
cifixion and resurrection, Jesus furnished conclusive 
evidence of man's oneness with God, but his individual ex- 
perience did not lessen the demand that each mortal must 
sometime and in some way do likewise. The foundation 
of Christianity was not the martyrdom of its Founder, 
but the truth which his teaching and example brought 
to the recognition of humanity. It required no human or 
animal sacrifice on the part of Abraham to establish the 
verity of the God of Israel; and it required no sacrifice 
of human life for Jesus to establish the verity of the 
Father's presence in healing the sick and in raising the 
dead. 

We learn from the Scriptures that man, in his true 
estate, is not at war with his Creator, but is the son of 
God, always inseparable from the Father. To bring to 
humanity a working knowledge of this saving truth was 
the Messiah's mission, not to/ be personally deified, or 
to be offered as a propitiatory sacrifice. The religion 
which Jesus taught and practised, and which he expected 
his followers to practise and perpetuate, was not a sancti- 
fied paganism. Christianity was the crown and glory of 
the highest spiritual thought of Israel which had preceded 
it, but it had nothing in common with heathen concep- 
tions of Deity, nor with the beliefs and practices which 
grew out of them. Both the deification and sacrifice of 
human beings bear the stamp of the purest paganism, 
and the leopard can change his spots as readily as these 
practices can transform themselves into the exercises of 
enlightened religion. 

In his vision at Patmos St. John beheld the perils 
which Christianity would encounter, and a second cap- 
tivity or banishment which was to overtake the Church, 
or spiritual Israel. In the twelfth chapter of the Apoca- 
lypse, the serpent appears as "a great red dragon," 
waiting to destroy the child which should be born of 
the woman. Failing in this, the dragon persecuted the 



DRIVEN TO THE WILDERNESS 229 

woman, until she fled into the wilderness, where she was 
to be protected from " the face of the serpent " for a 
period of 1260 days, equivalent in prophetic time to the 
same number of years. In this passage, the woman has 
been interpreted as signifying the spirituality of the early 
Church, which had been gradually diminishing until it 
practically disappeared from the external structure or 
organization. 

We have seen how the serpent began to persecute the 
woman when it was found impossible to destroy the 
Christ by crucifying the human Jesus. The divine fea- 
ture of the new faith was its spirituality, and it was 
naturally against this that the carnal mind would direct 
its antagonism, for in its spiritual element lay the vital 
force of Christianity. Let the spirituality of the new 
religion be submerged in materialism, and its power to 
uplift and redeem men would be lost. In such an event, 
evil would naturally find nothing to resist. The aims and 
tendencies of Christianity and worldliness find no com- 
mon atmosphere in w^hich to thrive, strive hard as mor- 
tals may to mingle them. The carnal mind felt no enmity 
towards the religions of paganism, human sacrifices and 
all. It did not oppose the introduction of pagan rites 
into the religion of Israel. All that evil has opposed is 
whatever tends to spiritualize the thoughts of humanity, 
and thus to establish the sovereignty of good in the con- 
sciousness of men. 

The spiritual decline and captivity of Israel had been 
accomplished by the inflow of paganism into the inner 
life of the nation, and the carnal mind was now at work 
to counteract in the same way the spiritual infl.uence of 
Christianity, but so quietly and insidiously as to lull 
Christendom to sleep over what was taking place. Not- 
withstanding the plain and insistent precepts and in- 
junctions uttered by the Master regarding the essentials 
of the Christian life, and the indispensable conditions of 
discipleship, the opinions and interpretations of church 
leaders became accredited as definitions of Christianity. 
These personal views, afterwards authorized as creeds 



230 FOOTSTEPS OF ISRAEL 

of the Church, were more or less colored by influences 
not derived from the Founder of Christianity, but from 
the religious traditions and practices of both Jew and 
Gentile. 

Ihe adoption of the ancient pagan superstition of 
vicarious human sacrifice as a prominent feature of 
church doctrine, logically led to the belief that human 
salvation could be realized without individual self-sacri- 
fice and reformation. The deification of the person of 
Jesus, in direct contradiction of his own statements 
to the contrary, was another notable instance of pagan 
influence, as can be seen by an examination of early pro- 
fane history. This doctrine contravenes the fundamental 
truth of Israel, that God is One, and soon led to the 
deification of Jesus' mother as well. This dogma of the 
divinity of the fleshly Jesus removed him from that 
human kinship into which he had invited all who follow 
him in deed, and placed his example upon an altitude to 
which Christians may not logically aspire. The stamp 
of evil is plainly visible in the consequences of these 
teachings. The spirituality of first-century Christianity 
began to be replaced by adherence to the letter of church 
doctrines, and by a zealous devotion to the person of 
its Founder. As the Jews could not see the Messiah 
because of their hatred of the personal Jesus, so Chris- 
tians, conversely, began to lose sight of the spiritual 
Christ in their worship of the man, until their adoration 
of the great Teacher gradually overshadowed the vital 
importance of obeying his teachings. 

The healing of the sick, which had been such a con- 
spicuous feature of Jesus' ministry, was continued by 
the disciples after his ascension, and became a normal 
activity of the Church in its earlier history ; but with the 
injection into its life of false and unregenerative teach- 
ing, like unsuspected virus, and torn by contending fac- 
tions, the spiritual sensibility of the Church became more 
and more benumbed until its healing office finally ceased 
to function. 
What had taken the place of this vital feature of 



DRIVEN TO THE WILDERNESS 231 

Christian faith? Turning away from this divine nour- 
ishment, this fruit of the Christianity authorized and 
estabHshed by its Founder, upon what could the church 
feed and prosper? 

The formal adoption of Christianity by the Emperor 
Constantine, and its establishment as the state religion, 
generally acclaimed as a triumph for the Church, only 
left it stranded in the meshes of worldly favor and pros- 
perity. It relinquished its purely sacred character to 
become a political factor in the empire, its offices being 
the object of ambition and intrigue, while the emperor's 
decisions became the final word in its councils. The rise 
of the papacy succeeded in gathering the Church under 
its control until in 606 a.d. the Emperor Phocas decreed 
Pope Boniface III to be head of all the churches of 
Christendom. It has been stated by some writers that at 
this period the spirituality of the Church had practically 
disappeared. The woman had fled into the wilderness, 
to reappear in the fulness of time. 



CHAPTER XXII 
Emerging from Obscurity 

And I will bring the blind by a way that they knew 
not ; I will lead them in paths that they have not known : 
I will make darkness light before them, and crooked 
things straight. These things will I do unto them, and 
not forsake them. — Is A. 42 : 16. 

Hear the word of the Lord, O ye nations, and declare 
it in the isles afar off, and say, He that scattered Israel 
will gather him, and keep him, as a shepherd doth his 
flock. 

For the Lord hath redeemed Jacob, and ransomed him 
from the hand of him that was stronger than he. — Jer. 
31 : 10, II. 

THE footsteps of both literal and spiritual Israel had 
now faded into almost total obscurity, and human 
consciousness entered the period of moral and 
spiritual eclipse known as the Dark Ages. Ecclesiasti- 
cism held Europe under its paralyzing influence, until 
men lost the conscious liberty to think for themselves, 
and civilization itself lapsed into a state of semibarba- 
rism. The spirit of the Master's teachings no longer 
vitalized the Church, purity practically ceased to be a 
virtue, and society, unrestrained and unrebuked, wal- 
lowed in the most abject materialism. 

It was indeed the serpent's hour. The seed of the 
woman had apparently been uprooted and destroyed. 
Israel, a wanderer among the Gentiles, an exile from the 
Promised Land, had passed so completely out of the 
thought of the world as to be forgotten almost in name. 
The Jew was a despised outcast, the prey of all who cared 
to rob or persecute him. Christianity, as Jesus had prac- 
tised it, no longer represented by the Church, and no 
longer sought for its divine power, had passed into a 
spiritual oblivion from which scarcely a gleam of its 
divinity reached mankind. It was the verification of the 



EMERGING FROM OBSCURITY 233 

Master's statement, "If the light that is in thee be dark- 
ness, how great is that darkness ! " The voice of the 
spiritual Christ had become inarticulate, while material 
sense was enthroned as lord over all. Sitting in the 
seat of authority at the council tables of church and 
state, receiving the homage and obedience of all classes, 
with nothing disputing its sway over the thoughts of 
men, what more could the carnal mind ask for? 

To one superficially viewing the situation at that period, 
the serpent appeared to have completely triumphed. The 
grasp of evil upon the consciousness of Christendom was 
so universal and unqualified that if the carnal mind 
could be conceived of as a living entity, exercising intel- 
ligence and power independently of the thoughts of mor- 
tals, there would seem small prospect that mankind could 
ever regain their freedom. Goodness and spirituality 
were no longer demanded, and the regenerative purpose 
of Christianity was set aside or forgotten, a state of 
things which continued with little variation or respite 
for centuries. Had the light of revelation gone out in 
the darkness? and had evil succeeded in founding an 
enduring kingdom upon the ruins of righteousness ? Had 
the Scriptures failed, and the work of the woman been 
swept away? 

By no means. Not one jot or tittle of the law of 
God's supremacy had failed, nor had the work of the 
Christ been reversed in the minutest particular. Evil 
had not succeeded in quenching the smallest spark of 
divinity that had gleamed even for a moment across the 
perception of humanity. The figure one could as easily 
be eliminated from mathematical reckoning as that good 
could be lost from the sum of reality. Human conscious- 
ness was simply sounding the depths of the suggestion 
that evil is as real as good, and was passing through 
a sense of the obscuration of good which the acceptance 
of that suggestion entailed. The experience of the Dark 
Ages was having as much effect upon the fact of God's 
presence in the universe as an eclipse has upon the sun. 
Looking from the earth, the solar beams seem obscured, 



234 FOOTSTEPS OF ISRAEL 

and shadow takes the place of sunshine; but looking 
from the sun, there would be no loss of light apparent, 
nothing would be touched or interfered with, and the 
shining would go on without interruption. Presently the 
» shadow passes and everything is seen as before. The 
' shadow appeared for the time to have triumphed over 
the sun, but it did not; and if an eclipse lasted for a thou- 
sand years, it would still have no effect upon the sun. 

The Hebrew prophets had foreseen this spiritual 
eclipse, this deepening of the shadow cast upon human 
consciousness by its belief in the serpent's lie, but their 
knowledge of spiritual astronomy had assured them with 
mathematical certainty of the reappearing of the light. 
From the mount of revelation they were given a glimpse 
of the other side of the shadow, and were not disturbed 
over the eventual outcome. The would-be watchers of 
the spiritual heavens of today must look from the same 
point of observation, for it is obvious that the truth of 
things cannot be seen from any other direction. Since 
it is not possible to see even material things correctly 
in the dark, one cannot hope to judge rightly of spiritual 
things from the outward appearance, since materiality 
in all its phases is the obscuration, not the revelation, 
of spiritual truth. 

From its earliest use, the word Israel signified do- 
minion over evil, not subjection to it. If Israel had 
signified the legitimacy of accepting evil, she would have 
represented the seed of the serpent, not the seed of the 
woman. Israel was the acknowledgment of but one God, 
and therefore but one power and intelligence, not two. 
This perception, when she was obedient to it, was her 
vital breath, her foundation, her defense, as it afterwards 
became, in a greater degree, of Christianity. Apart from 
the correctness or the incorrectness of their differing 
concepts of Deity, the fundamental distinction between 
the religion of Israel and the religions of paganism, was 
that the latter were based upon plurality and the former 
upon oneness. The unity of God, enunciated by Moses 
in the First Commandment, and accepted in Israel from 



EMERGING FROM OBSCURITY 235 

Abraham down, made no provision and admitted of no 
place for a second deity, a second power, or a second 
reality. 

Although the light of spiritual Israel had been ap- 
parently put out by the national apostasy, it remained 
one with its divine source, and only awaited the passing 
of the shadow to shine forth more brightly than before, 
otherwise the eclipse would have been followed by ex- 
tinction. It was this indestnictibility of good which 
made its human obscuration necessarily transient. It 
is because the sun continues to shine that the mists and 
clouds eventually disperse. It is because God remains 
what He is, the infinitude of being, that evil's claim to be 
something and someone falsifies itself, and disappears. 
Their recognition of these facts helped the prophets to 
foresee the final collapse of evil, as the great deception or 
delusion of the ages, and the triumph of good as supreme 
in human consciousness. 

Ijn the solar universe, when the totality of an eclipse 
is reached, it begins to move off, for the irresistible law 
governing the movements of the planets gives it no op- 
portunity to become permanent^ In like manner, when 
the Dark Ages had reached their greatest obscurity, they 
began, at first almost imperceptibly, to lighten. The 
ascendancy which evil had apparently gained during this 
period was simply the prestige which a deception ac- 
quires in being accounted true. The history of evil in 
the w^orld, so far as it can be said to have a history, 
has never amounted to more than this. 

In the twelfth chapter of Revelation the woman is rep- 
resented as " clothed with the sun," and from that center 
of illumination, as everyone knows, no eclipse could be 
visible. In this passage St. John symbolizes the view- 
point of the highest spiritual thought of the latter days, 
that is to say, the viewpoint of Israel. The religion of the 
early Hebrew patriarchs grew out of their apprehension 
of the one God, but it neither included nor made mention 
of an evil god or power which they should fear, or which 
could have a place in God's universe. No capable teacher 



236 FOOTSTEPS OF ISRAEL 

of mathematics would instruct his students to attach any 
truth or value to the errors that might appear in their 
work, for those who abide by the rules of that science 
know there is no provision in it for mistakes. For ex- 
ample, there is no opportunity for two and tw^o to result 
in any other sum than four, and the supposition that the 
resulting sum is anything else, though it might be be- 
lieved by a million persons and be persistently defended 
by them, would not represent anything at all except a 
delusion. It is certain that no right-minded student of 
mathematics would expect to overcome his errors by 
believing them to be true, but by learning more of the 
truth about numbers. 

The spiritual thinkers of this age, enlightened by the 
truths of Christianity, should not lend as willing ears 
to the arguments of the serpent as did mortals six thou- 
sand years ago. We should have reached the point where 
we know enough to avoid the past follies and mistakes 
of our race, instead of repeating them. If we have care- 
fully followed the footsteps of spiritual Israel, we have 
seen that they have ever been turned towards a better 
understanding of God, and must therefore have involved 
a diminishing acknowledgment of aught beside Him; 
that is, the progress of Israel must consistently mean 
more of good and less of evil in human consciousness. 
If this were not being realized, the development of what 
Israel represented in the w^orld would lead humanity 
further and further from God until their sense of good 
would finally be lost. But the former position being 
true, it necessarily follows that, as men understand God 
better, evil will proportionately decrease until nothing re- 
mains to obscure God from human vision. It is tow^ards 
that consummation that the prophecies point, and the 
query naturally arises, since the Scriptures reveal God 
as the same in all ages, the same today as yesterday, 
and as He will be tomorrow and forever, whether it is 
not as much of a mistake now to believe in a mixture 
of good and evil as it was at any time in the past, or as 
it will be at any time in the kingdom of heaven? 



EMERGING FROM OBSCURITY 237 

The religion which prevailed in Europe during the 
medieval ages was a compound of sensualism and mys- 
ticism, or the beliefs of paganism disguised in Christian 
terms, and bore no resemblance to Christ's Christianity. 
It rested upon the doctrine that evil is as real as good, 
and that it is, therefore, as truly a part of man's exist- 
ence, a position which is precisely what the serpent has 
insisted upon from the beginning, and w^hich it is cun- 
ningly working to infuse into the thought of Christen- 
dom today. Judging by its doctrines and its fruits, the 
religion which flourished during that period w^as the re- 
ligion of the carnal mind, not the divine afflatus of the 
Church of Christ. 

The necessity of resisting and overcoming evil, which 
had been so insistently taught by Jesus and his apostles, 
was reduced almost to the vanishing point. Iniquity, 
openl}^ and unashamed, invaded the precincts of the 
Church, and was condoned and trafficked in for worldly 
gain. Spiritually barren, it impoverished all and en- 
riched none. That the Dark Ages experienced the utter 
and complete paganization of the Church can readily be 
seen by a detailed comparison of its dogmas and practices 
with those of the nations which carried the houses of 
Israel and Judah into captivity. No longer animated by 
the spirit of Christ, medieval Christianity degenerated 
into a sensual, image-worshipping, mystery-enshrouded 
system whose only counterpart can be found in the re- 
ligions of Egypt, Babylon, and Assyria. 

About the twelfth century, when the intolerance and 
corruption of the Church had reached their climax, the 
priest-ridden and well-nigh bankrupt consciousness of 
Europe began to turn against its oppressor. Protests 
against the papal system arose and spread rapidly, but 
the gathering revolt did not develop into any effective 
or lasting expression until, in the fourteenth century, 
Wycliff succeeded in translating the Bible into English. 
The reading of the Scriptures had not been allowed in 
any but the Latin language, and their possession by the 
laity was forbidden. This had made the Bible a closed 



238 FOOTSTEPS OF ISRAEL 

book to the great mass of the people. An open Bible 
would naturally expose the failure of the Church to live 
up to its requirements, unmask her hypocrisies and de- 
ceptions, and lift the superstition and fear which formed 
the bulwark of her power. It would mean the freedom 
of the people to think for themselves, always the greatest 
foe of despotism and intolerance. It would mean dis- 
pelling the mystery with which paganism had surrounded 
its claims and its inner activities. Hence the bitter op- 
position to the translation of the Word of God into any 
language which the common people could understand. 
It was simply the struggle of the carnal mind to main- 
tain its authority over the moral and spiritual liberty of 
men. 

When it is learned that the religion of Rome was 
practically identical with the pagan cults of Babylon and 
Assyria, that is of the countries which had taken Israel 
captive, it will be seen why the liberation of the Hebrew 
Scriptures was so unscrupulously opposed. It was the 
old-time conflict of paganism with the God of Israel 
transferred to Occidental Europe, — "old foes with new 
faces." The underlying incentive of the Gentile con- 
quest lay deeper than the desire for national dominion; 
it was the enmity of the carnal mind to the spiritual 
ideals of Israel; and the same incentive, alike in nature 
if not in form, lay back of Rome's attempt to hold God's 
revelation captive in a pagan language, and to deny access 
to it even under that condition. Failing to hold Israel 
physically captive, her old enemies had followed her 
into her western home in the endeavor to prevent her 
moral and spiritual restoration through Christianity. 

All efforts to stay the freedom of the Bible failed. 
Its translation was completed by Wycliff and his friends, 
and was widely read. Other translations soon followed, 
and with the introduction of printing, the Scriptures be- 
came extensively circulated. Israel had truly begun to 
emerge from her captivity, not only as a nation, but as a 
spiritual movement, as the light-bearer to humanity. A 
mightier force was now at work against the enemies of 



EMERGING FROM OBSCURITY 239 

Israel than all the armies of the world, since nothing is 
feared by the powers of darkness but the coming of 
light. 

It is certain that nothing so surely threatens the hold 
of evil upon human thought as the Bible, read and un- 
derstood. The advent of Christianity when its teachings 
should be understood and practised meant the extinction 
of evil, hence the persistent effort to subvert the new 
teaching. We have seen the seduction of the early Church 
until she laid herself unresistingly in the arms of the 
world. Disguised in the mantle of ecclesiasticism, the 
carnal mind covered Christendom with moral darkness, 
and by its ban upon the Bible succeeded in holding it in 
that darkness for centuries. But it has ever proved to 
be as vain to fight against God as for darkness to attack 
the light. 

The freedom of the Bible, won through long and 
stern conflict, without doubt marked the beginning of 
Israel's return from her captivity, and from this time 
on the footsteps of both national and spiritual Israel 
will be seen to follow the higher understanding of the 
Scriptures, and the practical application of their teachings 
to human needs. It might be noted here that the Bible 
in its present form did not exist at the time of Israel's 
defeat and deportation. The collection of her sacred 
writings did not properly begin until after the return of 
the Jews from Babylon, and it was several centuries 
before the canon of the Old Testament was completed, 
and to this the Church later added the writings com- 
prising the New Testament, also of Israelitish origin. 
Thus during her wanderings in exile, though lost to view 
as a nation, God was preserving the record of her spiritual 
development, and, through His revealed Word, was pre- 
paring the way for her restoration. 

The footsteps of Israel, returning to the recognition 
of her own identity and destiny by way of the Scrip- 
tures, present one of the most logical and satisfying 
proofs of prophetic fulfilment in modem history; satis- 
fying, that is, to those who recognize the evidences of 



240 FOOTSTEPS OF ISRAEL 

God's guiding hand in her history. The progressive reve- 
lation of the nature and being of God which came to her 
patriarchs and prophets, and which were subsequently 
recorded in her sacred literature, could not be sepa- 
rated from the race through whose consciousness they 
came. It was this relation to God, as the avenue through 
which He was becoming known to mankind, that gave 
Israel her distinctive place among other races, and that 
will constitute her greatness and her glory when she 
returns to her appointed place in the latter days. This 
being true, the way of her return would necessarily lie 
through the Scriptures, that is, through the perception 
and understanding of the truth about God which had 
been committed to her in the beginning. It is perfectly 
logical, therefore, that lost Israel would first begin to 
find herself spiritually, and that she could find herself 
thus only as she recognized and obeyed the covenants 
God had made with her fathers. As this should be ac- 
complished, as she returned to the position which had 
been required of her in the days of the patriarchs and 
prophets, and which the Messiah amplified and confirmed, 
no combination of earthly powers could prevent her lit- 
eral restoration, both to her own consciousness and that 
of the world. 

As the conflict for the freedom of the Scriptures was 
being fought out, and as the natural offspring of that 
conflict, the great charter of civil liberty was obtained 
at Runnymede, and became the basis of civil rights in 
all Anglo-Saxon countries. Despotic monarchy in Eng- 
land never recovered from this blow, and the fight con- 
tinued from that vantage ground until the Anglo-Saxon 
nations enjoy the freest and most democratic govern- 
ment in the world. Following this came the translation 
of the Bible at the command of King James I, a work 
which was done so well that, despite its defects, it still 
remains the standard version throughout Protestant 
Christendom. Whatever personal motives may have 
moved the king in this undertaking, its accomplishment 
Is an outstanding landmark in the restoring of Israel, 



EMERGING FROM OBSCURITY 241 

and was as surely providential as any event in the history 
of that race. 

The moving "upon the face of the waters" which 
had been taking place in England soon made itself felt 
throughout all Europe. The resistance to the domina- 
tion of Rome, which had been steadily growing among 
the thinking classes, found its outlet in the crisis pre- 
cipitated by Luther. The pent-up feelings of those who 
had been chafing under papal despotism were unloosed, 
and the freedom of the Bible was soon followed by the 
victory for freedom of conscience. The pall of super- 
stitious fear which had lain so heavily upon men's minds 
was steadily lifting. The Dark Ages were passing like 
a long nightmare, and eyes began to open to the first 
gray of dawn, for a day was breaking whose sun would 
never again set upon Israel and her people. The proph- 
ets gave no hint of a third captivity, and we may well 
believe that the new order which was being wrought 
out in such conflict and sacrifice heralded the reappear- 
ing of the Christ, whose kingdom is to be "an everlasting 
kingdom." 

But with all these momentous steps forward, it is not 
to be assumed that the return of Israel has yet been en- 
tirely accomplished. The quickening process is being 
resisted at every step by the Pharaoh of materialism, just 
as disinclined as of old to " let Israel go." National exile 
was but the first and simplest phase of her captivity. Her 
real captor was the carnal mind, which had succeeded 
in loosing her from her fidelity to her covenants, and so 
bound her to the service of the carnal senses that she lost 
the spiritual freedom which had been her greatest legacy. 
The return of Israel, therefore, means immeasurably 
more than the resumption of national existence, more 
than the freedom of conscience, more than the liberty 
to study the Bible : it means the will and the freedom to 
render full allegiance to God. 

In the first covenant after the escape from Egypt, 
Moses announced God's promise to be the Physician of 
His people if they kept faith with Him. The freedom to 



242 FOOTSTEPS OF ISRAEL 

keep this covenant has not yet been won. The carnal mind 
is yet in outward control of the health of Israel, and is 
holding her in a despotism more absolute and tyrannical 
than any which has preceded it. The practice of material 
medicine originated in pagan priestcraft, not in divine 
revelation, and pertains most unquestionably to the times 
of the Gentiles; for nowhere in the sacred records of 
Israel, either in the Old or New Testament, did it ever 
replace God's covenant of healing. The declaration, 
"For I the Lord am thy physician," remained opera- 
tive throughout all God's dealings with Israel, and is as 
inseparable from her fidelity to God today as it was when 
it was first uttered. Until the yoke of materialism in 
medicine as well as in religion is broken from off the 
neck of Israel, she cannot be said to have truly awakened 
to her identity or to her destiny as the chosen of God. 



CHAPTER XXIII 
The Hebrew Scriptures 

He sheweth His word unto Jacob, His statutes and His 
judgments, unto Israel. 

He hath not dealt so with any nation: and as for 
His judgments, they have not known them. — Ps, I47* 
19, 20. 

Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. — 
I Thess, 5:21. 

THE best known but probably least understood book 
in the world's literature is that collection of Hebrew 
sacred writings which we call the Bible. Other 
races, it is true, have their sacred writings, but except for 
the student they possess little general interest outside of 
their own people, although these same races were power- 
ful nations when Israel was forgotten in exile. The 
reason for this inequality of interest and status, dating 
back through the days of legend and tradition to the 
earliest Hebrew conception of Deity, furnishes one of the 
most valuable chapters in the history of religion. 

What, then, gives the sacred records and literature of 
Israel their eminently distinguished place in the world 
today? What turns the thoughts of the civilized world 
towards this Book with such unfeigned reverence, ad- 
miration, and hope? Why do not men turn with the 
same feeling towards the sacred writings of other 
peoples? and wherefore the translation of the Bible into 
all known languages, and its distribution to all parts of 
the earth, in preference, for example, to the sacred books 
of the Persians, Hindus, or Chinese? What constitutes 
the impelling attraction which holds the thought of so 
many millions to this product of a people whose very 
existence has long been called into question? 

It is evident that the answer must be found in some- 
thing which is not common to the sacred books of other 



244 FOOTSTEPS OF ISRAEL 

races. It is not to be found, for instance, in the story 
that man was created from the dust of the ground, for 
this fable may be found in the legends and literature of 
other nations, and is taught, moreover, with unquestion- 
ing enthusiasm by schools of thought which claim no 
connection with religion or theology. Neither can the 
answer be found in the later history of this material 
creation, for one can carefully examine the pages of 
Scripture which are concerned with the man of flesh, 
which record his sins and shortcomings, his weaknesses 
and mortality, and discover therein no vestige of reason 
for the supremacy which the Bible holds and maintains 
in the world's literature, and in human interest and val- 
uation. Men find neither inspiration nor spiritual 
nourishment in the Biblical records of human depravity, 
or of the idolatries, misfortunes, and failures of Israel, 
for they already know too much of evil to find any 
consolation or attraction in the errors and misdoings of 
the ancients, or in any doctrine which offers no higher 
origin for man than mindless dust. 

The secret of the Bible's position centers in the evi- 
dence which it contains of the actual presence of God with 
men, in contradistinction to the mythical nature of pagan 
deities. This evidence is not common to the sacred books 
of the so-called Gentile nations, a fact which places the 
Bible in a class by itself, and gives it a prestige which 
can only be endangered by the failure to continue this 
evidence. The Bible gives no representation of Deity 
which men may picture to the eye or embody in a form, 
but to them who are ready to walk in it, it presents the 
way by which men may literally demonstrate the divine 
aid with as much certainty as anything which enters into 
their human knowledge. Whether they take advantage 
of this privilege or not, men feel that this Book presents 
the only remedy for the evil in their lives, and this 
remedy is an understanding of the God whose living 
divinity breathes through its pages, ever waiting to uplift 
and redeem humanity. 

The strength of the Bible undoubtedly lies in this 



THE HEBREW SCRIPTURES 245 

element of proof. It is not a comparatively difficult 
thing to theorize about the unseen Being whom we call 
God, and to build up a religion upon these theories, but 
it is quite another question to furnish the evidence that 
these theories are true. If the history of the Israelites 
afforded no verification of the great things declared of 
their God, if they had had no tangible ground for their 
faith, nothing humanly appreciable to lay hold of, 
Jehovah would have been to them as mythological as 
the gods of their pagan neighbors. 

The patriarchs of Israel had not the opportunities or 
the privileges of this generation. There was no Bible 
from which to draw their inspiration, and to learn of 
God; for these men were among the earliest makers of 
the Bible, and were opening the path for coming ages 
into what the apostle called "the mystery of godliness." 
Their senses were so clearly cognizant of the Divine 
presence that they knew whereof they spoke, and it w^as 
around their testimon}^, and the accumulation of evi- 
dence which followed, that the Scriptures began to grow^ 
up. They w^ere not dealing with myths but with definite 
and pronounced facts. The foundation they were pre- 
paring for the superstructure to be afterw^ards built upon 
it was solid and enduring, so much so that the God 
known by Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob remained un- 
rivaled in Israel, and is the God of the Anglo-Saxon 
race today. 

The Bible thus grew^ out of the spiritual memorials 
of Israel, and not out of baseless traditions or the child- 
ish imaginings of an untutored people. There were men 
in those days who walked w^ith God so closely that they 
heard and obeyed His voice, and the impression which 
their exalted experiences left upon the thought of hu- 
manity has never been erased. The rise of Israel as a 
separate people broadened the opportunity for testing 
the foundation of their faith, and on numerous occasions 
the whole nation w^ere witnesses of God's power in their 
behalf. It was out of such substantial and practical testi- 
mony that the Bible came forth, and the same type of 



246 FOOTSTEPS OF ISRAEL 

experiences accompanied its development up to the writ- 
ing of the last book, and must naturally accompany its 
proper course and understanding to the end of time. 

The fact that the Israelites were monotheists was not 
of itself conclusive proof that they had any knowledge 
of the true God, since it is as possible for one deity as 
for many to be the outgrowth of mythology, hence the 
necessity for verification under actual test, and it was 
on this ground that the God of Israel was found to be 
literally '^ above all gods." . This explains the frequent 
use of the term *' living God " in contradistinction to the 
lifeless deities of other nations, and the Scriptures made 
this distinction solely because the living presence of the 
God of Israel had been humanly realized in the history of 
this people until it had become established as an unde- 
niable fact. The other nations naturally believed their 
gods to be also alive, but, since they had no evidence of 
any response to their appeals, their belief went little oxi 
no further than superstitious credulity. 

The inspiration of those who in different ages were 
making the Bible possible was not derived from human 
intercourse or human events, but from individual com- 
munion with God ; and it is evident that before the Bible 
can be understood in its highest meaning, and in the full 
significance of its mission in the earth, something of 
that same inspiration and communion will be needed. 
We shall have to rise to the same spiritual vision of man 
as the son of God if we would see the beauty and the 
majesty of the divine idea which underlies the Scriptures, 
for it is perfectly certain that this vision cannot be 
gained while we regard God's likeness as a worm of the 
earth, and His universe as doomed to ultimate destruc- 
tion. We can find neither inspiration nor spiritual vision 
in this material conception, nor can the immortal nature 
of God's creation be discerned from that standpoint. 
So long as men make material sense their basis of reason 
and perception, it is plain that they will miss the spiritual 
sense of the Scriptures, and without this spiritual sense 
they can exert no divine influence over mankind. 



THE HEBREW SCRIPTURES 247 

The self-evident nature of these conclusions indicates 
.what has veiled to a large extent the spiritual meaning 
and message of tlie Bible, and that is, the materialism 
of human belief, w^hich affirms man to be of the earth 
earthy, and to have a consciousness separate from God. 
We cannot hope to understand the Scriptural revelation 
of God if we try to decipher it materially, for the suffi- 
cient reason that spiritual things, as St. Paul said, must 
be spiritually discerned. The Bible has not become the 
center of the world's religious thought and desire because 
of its material records, but because it holds the way of 
escape from the flesh and its evils, not through a process 
of death, but through the regeneration of consciousness. 
To the literal human sense Israel was but a group of 
mortals, w^hereas in the true sense Israel signified the 
coming of the divine idea to human perception; hence 
the real Israelites were those who, under the inspiration 
of this true idea, recognized themselves to be spiritually 
the children of God. 

A material interpretation of the Bible naturally serves 
to perpetuate the false view of God and man which the 
serpent has suggested to mortals from the beginning of 
their history. No one could reasonably expect to dis- 
cover the truth about God and man in material sense, 
because it is this sense alone w^hich supports the experi- 
ence of sin and death; and yet the truth about God and 
man is what the Scriptures are designed to reveal, and 
is what Jesus declared would make men free. It is ob- 
vious that one cannot see both Truth and error from 
the same standpoint, since opposite views are seen from 
opposite directions and necessarily lead to opposite des- 
tinations. One must, therefore, decide whether he will 
seek a knowledge of the facts of being from a spiritual 
or a material source, for it is certain that he cannot re- 
ceive this knowledge from both. From the nature and 
purpose of its teaching it is readily apparent that the 
Bible must be interpreted spiritually to get its redemptive 
import, for its material aspect relates only to those things 
which are to pass away, and which therefore possess 
only a passing interest. 



248 FOOTSTEPS OF ISRAEL 

An indiscriminately literal reading of the Biblical text 
has given rise to the belief that God actually spoke the 
human words which are ascribed to Him, and that the 
allegories, parables, and metaphors recorded there are 
accounts of historical events ; the result of such a reading 
has been, not only to deprive the abounding symbolism 
of the Scriptures of much of its meaning and value, but 
to impart a manlike view of Deity which virtually iden- 
tifies the finite with the infinite, and mingles the divine 
and the human as resting on a common earthly plane. 

In the simplicity of thought which was characteristic 
of primitive peoples, the Israelites regarded their spir- 
itual impressions, their intuitive apprehension of divine 
things, as messages from God ; they were His voice speak- 
ing to them, as indeed they were in so far as they were 
true to the divine nature ; but they also regarded as com- 
ing from God what were clearly their own personal feel- 
ings in respect to the ordinary events of their existence, 
or to the neighboring nations, or to the results of their 
own and others' wrongdoing; and to their sense these 
were also the voice of God speaking to them in anger or 
repentance, defining their punishment, or inciting them 
to vengeance against their enemies. In this way God is 
often made to appear, from the literal text, in a char- 
acter entirely at variance with the better view of Him 
which came with progress and enlightenment. 

It is plain, therefore, that one needs to be guided by 
the spirit more than by the letter of the text in interpret- 
ing the teachings of Scripture. This is especially neces- 
sary in the earlier portions of the Bible, which were 
pieced together out of a mass of legends, traditions, and 
ancient records, with occasional lapses, repetition, and 
misarrangement in the narrative, and which, with the 
rest of the Old Testament, and to a lesser extent of the 
New, were subject to the errors and interpolations of 
copyists. Thus the verbal rendering frequently presents 
a view of God that is little better than the deities of the 
pagans, in that it pictures Him as sharing the weak- 



THE HEBREW SCRIPTURES 249 

nesses of mortals, whereas the spirit of the entire Scrip- 
tures declares God to be above all human error and 
frailty. 

However widely human opinions may differ respect- 
ing the extent of Scriptural inspiration, one thing is 
absolutely certain, and that is that God did not reveal 
Himself as possessing antagonistic qualities, or as being 
less than the '' altogether lovely." It is literally impos- 
sible for the divinity which fills all space and time and 
being to be anything or to do anything contradictory to 
His own nature, or that w^ould deny the infinity of His 
goodness; nor could He inspire statements or acts which 
would make Him appear false to His own perfection. The 
perfect Creator could not forswear Himself by bringing 
forth that which His very perfection condemns. It 
should be seen as self-evident that Biblical teaching is not 
true simply because it is found between the covers of the 
Bible, but because it can justify itself as truth in its powxr 
to bring goodness into the lives of men. 

In justice to the God of Israel, we must interpret the 
Scriptures only in consonance wuth the best and highest 
things which have been therein said of Him, and not in 
attempted conformity with the cruder concepts of Deity 
w^hich may be found there, and which were afterwards 
superseded by Jesus' ideal of the perfect Father. An 
interpretation of Scripture as ascribing a dual conscious- 
ness to Deity, that is, as being cognizant of the presence 
of evil as well as of good, is m^anifestly incapable of in- 
spiring mankind wdth the hope of ever attaining a state 
of being wherein is no sense of evil, and to help mankind 
towards that heavenly consciousness is surely the purpose 
of the Bible. The trail of the serpent is plainly visible in 
this attempt to debase the nature of Deity, and to inject 
this depraved concept into the thoughts of men in the 
name of truth. 

Human thought has made some progress from the 
concept of God as tempting man w^ith the opportunity to 
know evil, for nothing of that nature is to be found in 
Jesus' teachings, and we must read the Scriptures in the 



250 FOOTSTEPS OF ISRAEL 

light of his teachings if we would know God as he did. 
The Bible is a progressive revelation of God and His 
relation to man, and to be just to it, or to understand 
it aright, we must keep pace with that progress and read it 
in the light of its nearest approach to perfection. The 
color which peculiarities of race and the customs of the 
age impart to its narratives or to its diction is purely- 
human, and bears no relation to the message which the 
language is intended to convey. It is not the letter, but 
the spirit behind the words, finding its response in ex- 
alted human thought and action, which blesses mankind. 
The essential value and importance of the Scriptures lie 
in the spiritual truth which they unfold, a process which 
human language alone is unable to accomplish ; hence the 
absolute necessity to get the inner meaning of the text, 
and to free it from the encumbering folds of the letter, 
if one would breathe the divine atmosphere which ever 
accompanies God's word. 

There is nothing in the human mind from which the 
spiritual truth of being could be evolved, hence it was 
necessary that this truth reach mankind through revela- 
tion. The point of least density in human consciousness, 
and therefore the point through which the light could 
begin to penetrate, was first designated in the Scriptures 
as "the woman," and later as Israel; and Israel has re- 
mained the channel through which God's revelations have 
come. It was because she alone furnished the oppor- 
tunity that made Israel the medium of the Messiah's 
advent, and it is to her spiritual restoration, or to the 
perception in this age of man's sonship with the Father, 
that we must naturally look for the reappearing of the 
Christ to himian consciousness. 



CHAPTER XXIV 
Israel's Restoration in Prophecy 

And He shall set up an ensign for the nations, and 
shall assemble the outcasts of Israel, and gather together 
the dispersed of Judah from the four corners of the 
earth. — Is a. ii : 12. 

At that time will I bring you again, even in the time 
that I gather you: for I will make you a name and a 
praise among all people of the earth, when I turn back 
your captivity before your eyes, saith the Lord. — Zeph. 
3 :20. 

Yet the number of the children of Israel shall be as 
the sand of the sea, which can not be measured nor num- 
bered ; and it shall come to pass, that in the place where 
it was said unto them, ye are not My people, there it 
shall be said unto them, Ye are the sons of the living 
God. — HosEA 1:10. 

IT is now about twenty-five centuries since the people 
of Israel were taken captive into Assyria and passed 
out of the world's notice. No modern history re- 
fers to that people as an existing nation, nor do we 
find any mention of her expected return. It has ap- 
parently been taken for granted, not only by the world 
generally but by the majority of Bible readers, that the 
Israelites are nationally extinct ; and that the nation which 
today is most spiritually enlightened is of Gentile origin 
and lineage. This position would virtually close the 
door upon that wonderful race which for centuries held 
the name of God aloft amid the universal idolatry; or 
at best it compromises the question in assuming that the 
Jews, the descendants of but one of Jacob's sons, are 
the only living representatives of Israel, and are, there- 
fore, to be regarded as the legitimate inheritors of the 
promises. From that standpoint there is no choice but 
to set aside a large portion of the prophetic Scriptures 
as false and useless, a course which would naturally bring 



252 



FOOTSTEPS OF ISRAEL 



into question the authenticity of the remainder of the 
Biblical records. 

The assurance which came to Jacob, after his name 
had been changed to Israel, was that of him should come 
'' a nation and a company of nations," a condition which 
was certainly not fulfilled prior to the captivity. If this 
does not describe the national condition of Israel today, 
the prophecy must either relate to still later ages, or 
possesses no significance. 

The completeness of Israel's disappearance may be 
seen from the present apathy of religious teachers re- 
garding the prophecies of the restoration. One Bible 
expositor, in commenting upon Jeremiah's prophecy of 
that event, says, " There was no return of the ten tribes 
that in any way corresponded to the terms of this proph- 
ecy. Our growing acquaintance with the races of the 
world seems likely to exclude even the possibility of 
any such restoration of Ephraim." The Bible dictionaries 
and cyclopedias practically ignore the subject altogether, 
a most remarkable fact in view of the large and im- 
portant place which it occupies in the Scriptures. One 
can drop half a circle and still have the complete circle 
as readily as he can drop the prophecies of the restora- 
tion out of the Scriptures and still retain their full value 
and importance. It is the restoration of Israel in all that 
it implies which is to round out the full circle of human 
redemption, as outlined in Holy Writ To deny this 
fulfilment of prophecy is to attack the integrity of the 
Scriptures, for they are literally built about that crown- 
ing event in the conflict between the serpent and the 
woman. The outcome of this struggle was never in 
doubt once the real nature of evil was perceived, hence 
the tone of absolute assurance which pervades the proph- 
ecies, and their unanimity respecting the bringing back 
of that spiritual type of thought expressed in Abraham; 
not, of course, at the same stage of development at which 
it disappeared, but ripened and prepared for the great 
work of gathering the whole human race into the rec- 
ognition and understanding of the one God. 



ISRAEL'S RESTORATION IN PROPHECY 253 

Inasmuch as Jesus and his apostles accepted these 
prophecies in all seriousness, there is no valid reason why- 
Christians should not today give them the same serious 
consideration. One difficulty in the v^ay of rightly view- 
ing this subject lies in the mystery with which human 
thought generally has surrounded the prophetic utter- 
ances, as if they were in some occult way designed to 
shape the fate of empires and of men. The concept too 
commonly entertained of the Supreme Being as an arbi- 
trary ruler, disposing of the fortunes of mortals with a 
capricious hand, favoring one set of persons more than 
another at His own pleasure, assigning some to honor 
and some to dishonor irrespective of merit or demerit, 
does not express the nature of divinity but of humanity, 
and therefore beclouds the true perception of His rela- 
tion to men. The notion that the God of Israel delib- 
erately selected that race of people to bear His name, 
and to express His glory to the less fortunate ; that He 
decreed in advance what their destiny should be, outlin- 
ing and describing their failures, idolatry, captivity, and 
return; and that at the same time He decreed the fate 
of other nations, — this pagan notion makes it extremely 
difficult or even impossible to understand history and 
prophecy in their relation to God's government, or as 
interpreting the operation and influence of divine law in 
human affairs. 

The fulfilment of the Hebrew prophecies is by no 
means a case of predestination, but is rather the unfolding 
realization of the supremacy of good upon the earth. The 
evils which come upon men and nations are but the reac- 
tion of going contrary to the law of good. Men find evil 
in their consciousness when they turn away from the serv- 
ice of God, but He does not put it there. The more the 
human mind rebels against the presence and the require- 
ments of God, the more evil seems to be present, and 
ancient and modern superstition has attributed this re- 
sult to God ; but such a conclusion w^ould place Deity on 
a level with humanity, and thus deny His divinity. The 
belief that certain events must occur merely because they 



254 FOOTSTEPS OF ISRAEL 

are predicted in the Bible is pure fatalism, and fatalism 
can have no place in the operation of divine wisdom and 
intelligence. Israel is not destined to return to her place 
and mission in the world simply because of the proph- 
ecies relating to that event but because the knowledge she 
had gained of God made it impossible to hold her forever 
bound in the meshes of evil. Neither did Jesus rise from 
the grave for the sole purpose of fulfilling prophecy, but 
because, as Peter declared to the Jews, " it was not pos- 
sible that he should be holden of it." In like manner, and 
for the same reason, Israel, with her glimpse of the one 
almighty God, could not be held forever in bondage to 
the carnal mind, for what she had seen and known of 
Him could not experience oblivion. 

It is certain that no one can love and worship the 
God of Israel and think of that people as an extinct race; 
or with any real faith in His promises can he think of 
Israel as never again to be known as a people and a 
nation. The carnal mind quite naturally argues against 
what it does not wish to have true, and so we find, as 
early as the time of Jeremiah, the suggestion being given 
out that Israel's unity and nationhood had passed beyond 
recall. " Moreover the word of the Lord came to Jere- 
miah, saying, Considerest thou not what this people have 
spoken, saying. The two families which the Lord hath 
chosen, He hath even cast them ofT ? Thus they have de- 
spised My people, that they should be no more a nation 
before them. Thus saith the Lord; If My covenant be 
not with day and night, and if I have not appointed the 
ordinances of heaven and earth; then will I cast away 
the seed of Jacob, and David My servant, so that I will 
not take any of his seed to be rulers over the seed of 
Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob: for I will cause their cap- 
tivity to return, and have mercy upon them." ( Jer. 33 : 
24-26. ) 

If it were true, as Christendom generally seems to as- 
sume, that the night which fell upon Israel was not to 
be followed by a morning, it would mean that the evils 
which led her captive were greater and more enduring 



ISRAEL'S RESTORATION IN PROPHECY 255 

than the good which she had learned of God. Such a 
conclusion should be regarded as unthinkable. Israel 
ranked highest spiritually among the nations because in 
her was expressed the highest understanding of God. 
For this people to adhere to what had been revealed to 
them, and to be faithful and progressive in their alle- 
giance to the divine demands, would mean the final over- 
throw and extinction of evil, hence the persistent effort 
of the carnal mind to betray Israel through the lusts of 
the flesh. But while this effort temporarily succeeded, 
and Israel was cast down from her exalted position, the 
resultant discipline could not, in the very nature of things, 
become permanent, for it is not in all the vain imaginings 
of evil to hold a spiritually enlightened sense in bondage 
forever. 

On the other hand, however, it is evident that Israel 
would not be restored simply for the purpose of again 
giving nationhood to the Israelites, for her existence as 
a nation, or the exercise of her national functions, is of 
little moment unless she has something more than other 
nations wherewith to bless the world. The purpose of 
the restoration is to redeem humanity, not merely to 
exalt one nation above another; and for humanity to be 
redeemed from their materialism, it is essential that the 
spiritual sense of man and his relation to God be restored 
to the chief place in hiiman thought. It was the spir- 
ituality she possessed which made Israel, in the true 
meaning of the word, the beloved of the Lord, and it 
will be her spirituality, not her material power or great- 
ness, that will bring her into her own again. In the 
vision of the prophets, the restoration of Israel was but 
another expression of the final establishment of the king- 
dom of the Christ; not the reappearance of a personal 
king, but the human perception and demonstration of 
divine truth. Only in this way could Isaiah's descrip- 
tion of restored Israel be realized : " And the Gentiles 
shall see thy righteousness, and all kings thy glory : and 
thou shalt be called by a new name, which the mouth of 
the Lord shall name. Thou shalt also be a crown of 



256 FOOTSTEPS OF ISRAEL 

glory in the hand of the Lord, and a royal diadem in the 
hand of thy God . . . And they shall call them, The holy 
people. The redeemed of the Lord." (Isa. 62:2, 3, 12.) 

Next to their description of the Messiah's advent, 
nothing evidenced the inspiration of the Hebrew prophets 
more than their vision of returning Israel. The human 
mind, at its highest point, had yet glimpsed but a small 
fraction of what lay behind that word. The real '' Is- 
rael of God " takes us back to the first chapter of Genesis, 
where it is recorded that man was made in the Divine 
likeness, and was given dominion over all the earth. The 
prophecies of the restoration indicate the place and status 
of national Israel when she should come to herself, and 
realize the utter futility of the serpent's delusions to hold 
the true idea captive. Abraham's perception of God as 
One carried him so far beyond the thought of his 
age that it became the nucleus of a new nation and a 
new order of thinking. It was literally impossible for 
this light of revelation to be put out, or for this better 
concept of Deity to see corruption in exile. Its return 
or restoration, as the predominating idea, was as inevi- 
table as the return of spring, or the dawn of another day. 
This would not be merely that Jehovah should keep His 
promises, as they were conceived and recorded by the 
prophets, but because good is immortal and indestructible. 

That there is an exactness in God's dealings with men 
may be read between the lines of the Scriptural records, 
an exactness which reveals Deity as infinitely transcend- 
ing the feeble human concept of Him which a superficial 
reading might seem to indicate. It is certain that no 
one can discover the truth about Israel unless he has 
the true idea of God as his point of obsen^ation ; and it 
is equally certain that no one, who has the true idea of 
God, can think of Him as a man, and as actually pos- 
sessing human qualities and thoughts. We should re- 
member that the Biblical writers had to convey their 
spiritual impressions of the great unseen Deity through 
the forms of speech which pertained to a purely human 
aense of being. The mistake has been in literalizing the 



ISRAEL'S RESTORATION IN PROPHECY 257 

figurative descriptions of these writers, and thus assuming 
that Deity possesses a human form, instead of seeking 
the higher meaning which these metaphors and illustra- 
tions were plainly intended to express. 

The capriciousness and partiality which the Israelites 
came to attach to Jehovah, and which may still be found 
in some modern types of religion, do not harmonize with 
the revelation which Moses received in Horeb, or with 
the First Commandment which was enunciated at Sinai. 
The eternal I AAI can have no affinity with the fickle 
moods of mortals, and the nature of divinity must be 
infinitely removed from human follies and frailties. It 
was inevitable and natural that those who knew most of 
God should soonest suffer from wrongdoing; and not 
perceiving that this was the working out of an exact rule, 
it was deemed the vengeance or wrath of the Almighty. 
Also, when they forsook their evil ways and obeyed God, 
and they experienced better conditions, they credited this 
in like manner to the favor of the Lord; whereas the 
rise and fall of their fortunes simply reflected the rise 
and fall of their own mental and moral state. This was 
clearly expressed in the saying of the apostle, ''What- 
soever a man soweth, that shall he also reap. For he 
that soweth to his flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption ; 
but he that soweth to the Spirit shall of the Spirit reap 
life everlasting." This does not put God afar off, nor 
make Him a cold abstraction, nor does it take Him out 
of the Scriptures as all that He is; but, on the contrary, 
it gives to God the infinite glory and goodness which 
inseparably belong to Him, and leaves with mortals the 
responsibihty of their own thoughts and acts. 

The fact should be borne in mind that, throughout 
all her backslidings and repentance, the God of Israel 
remained unchanged, never less than Himself, never less 
than divine, and never withholding from men the good 
which they were willing and ready to receive from Him. 
When the Israelites looked to God for their help, and 
obeyed His voice, they enjoyed peace and prosperity; 
but when they turned from Him and obeyed the sugges- 



258 FOOTSTEPS OF ISRAEL 

tions of evil, it was their punishment to gather the fruit 
of their own misdoings. Their attitude towards good 
or evil, towards the God of Abraham or the gods of the 
carnal mind, was not a thing of chance, nor the result 
of some compelling influence independent of their own 
mentality. It simply expressed their state of conscious- 
ness. Therefore the restoration, when it comies, will 
not be a special act of God, as we ordinarily understand 
that term, but the result of a mental process which has 
been going on through generations, a gradual awakening 
from the stupor of their servitude to error. It is written 
of the prodigal that when he " came to himself " in the 
far country where his disobedience had carried him, he 
began to think of his father, and arose and returned to 
him. Likewise when the prodigal nation of Israel should 
come to herself in the lands of her exile, and recognize 
the delusion of the idolatry into which she had fallen, 
there would naturally come the desire to return to the 
Father; and this quickening desire, gathering volume 
and momentum with the disillusionment, would accomp- 
lish her restoration, both in her own spiritual conscious- 
ness of God's fatherhood, and of her allotted place in the 
family of nations. 

The salvation of men or of nations is worked out in 
no other way. The writer of the book of Job clearly 
points out that mortals can neither give God anything 
nor take anything from Him on account of their right- 
eousness or their iniquity, whereas what they are and 
what they do mean everything to themselves. The moral 
defections of the Israelites did not and could not diminish 
in the smallest degree the omnipresence and goodness of 
God; they only succeeded in darkening their sense of 
His presence, and in filling their thoughts with His 
unlikeness. It was in their own human consciousness 
that something evil appeared to be happening, since 
nothing they could think or do could fill the conscious- 
ness of God with something foreign to His own nature. 
Their mental consent to have another god than good, to 
let God be less than all to them, was the place of their 



ISRAEL'S RESTORATION IN PROPHECY 259 

exile, the " far country" of the prodigal; and the only 
way back lay through the reversal of that mental process, 
namely, the unbelieving of their beliefs in something 
beside God. Very obviously all this knowing and un- 
knowing of evil, this making of mistakes and afterwards 
correcting them, was transpiring in their imperfect human 
sense of things, and had no possible place in the kingdom 
of God, wherein nothing contrary to His government 
could be known. 

The reader may object to this analysis of the situation, 
but the demand today is to be true to the highest idea of 
God which we find in the Scriptures, not to the lowest. 
There have surely been some progress and enlightenment 
in the understanding of divine things since the beginning 
of human history. If we subtract from the narratives of 
the Biblical writers and from the work of the transcrib- 
ers their superstitious belief that all things came to 
them from God, the evil as well as the good, and the 
impression which came down from primitive times that 
Deity was like unto men, we shall get a glimpse of what 
the inspired writers were striving to convey through the 
crude and sometimes barbarous notions of their age. 
The best things they conceived and spake of God were 
necessarily nearest to the truth, and it is evident we must 
continue towards the perfect ideal along the line of the 
highest revelation, until we reach the conviction that 
what men call Deity stands for that absolute boundless- 
ness of good in which there is no place for evil. If we 
accept the anthropomorphism of the Biblical writers as 
purely symbolical rather than literal, we shall see that the 
idea of God's perfection lay back of every inspired mes- 
sage delivered to Israel. 

It was this very perfection and infinitude of her God 
which made the ultimate restoration of Israel a certainty. 
The revelation of what God is reached human conscious- 
ness through that nation, and although she turned her 
back upon it for a period, the delusions of the carnal mind 
could not blot this revelation entirely from her mental 
life. Looking from their spiritual viewpoint, the proph- 



26o FOOTSTEPS OF ISRAEL 

ets foresaw Israel's return to God, in all its wonderful 
import to mankind. In that day the power of God is 
to be so gloriously manifest in her that all nations will 
flow to Israel to learn of Him. The material signs of 
identification will necessarily be overshadowed by the 
spiritual, for Israel will not return as a seeker after 
earthly dominion, but as the messenger of God's covenant 
and the witness of His truth. 

The visions of the prophets have been eloquently 
pointing to these things for more than two thousand 
years, and the invincible truth which underlies the in- 
spired Word will make these visions come true. They 
are coming true now. The suggestions of doubt regard- 
ing their fulfilment are prompted by that materialistic 
element in human thought which is not open to spiritual 
truth. The fact that the Christ appeared in the order 
foreseen by the prophets should be ample assurance that 
what remains of their prophetic messages may also be 
verified. The return of Israel in its completeness, how- 
ever, need not be looked for as the event of a day, but 
as the progressive reappearing to human consciousness of 
the truth about God. It means the recovery of man's 
spiritual dominion over evil, the maturing of the percep- 
tion which came to Jacob at Peniel, and this attainment 
will be reached only as the carnal mind is resisted and 
subdued. 

It can easily be seen that the restoration of Israel is 
the natural converging point of all that relates to human 
salvation, therefore all nations should be vitally interested 
in it. To overcome evil is the one necessity of the human 
race, and all peoples are grappling with it in some form 
and in some degree. Every honest effort to exalt good- 
ness above iniquity is a struggle with the serpent, and 
belongs to the line of the woman, no matter in what na- 
tionality it occurs. God is no respecter of nations, for 
with Him it is not a question of blood or of race, but of 
righteousness. Israel was acceptable to God to the ex- 
tent that God was acceptable to her. The choice always 
rests on the human side. They who choose to serve God 



THE RESTORATION OF PROPHECY 261 

are numbered among His chosen people, while they who 
reject Him thereby reject their divine sonship, no matter 
what may be their race or creed. 

Why, then, do we speak of the return of Israel more 
than the return of other nations? Simply because there 
was that in her racial mentality which was least responsive 
to the serpent's influence, and which would, therefore, 
soonest rebel against its impositions. The captivity into 
which Israel fell, represented the common consciousness 
of mankind. The Assyrian, Persian, and other Gentile 
peoples were held in the same captivity, but to them it 
expressed their native sense of things, hence they were 
not cognizant of its bondage; in other words, they had 
had no experience of something higher, which they had 
forsaken and to which they might return in repentance. 
Israel, on the other hand, had behind her a long record 
of better things, of wonderful experiences of deliverance 
and protection in times of national danger, of blessings 
poured out upon them from the Divine source, and the 
truth that these things had been, would naturally work 
out a desire to return, long before the more darkened 
Gentile consciousness reached the spiritual status of even 
exiled Israel. The prodigal son, even in his " riotous 
living," had that still within him which would arouse 
him to himself before those to whom such conditions were 
as their native element. The captivity of the human 
sense would, therefore, end first with Israel, because she 
possessed that which would not let her rest satisfied in 
it. Simeon spoke of Jesus as " a light to lighten the 
Gentiles " as well as " the glory of thy people Israel " ; 
this describes Israel's place in prophecy, and her mission 
when she emerges from the captivity of materialism, and 
that is to light the way out for the rest of humanity. 

The restoration of Israel will mean the renewal of 
the conflict with evil, not in the blind and hopeless manner 
in which it has been desultorily carried on, but with eyes 
open to its deceptive nature and its modes of operation. 
Israel had possessed, in some measure, the one weapon 
that avails in this warfare, and that was the truth of the 



262 FOOTSTEPS OF ISRAEL 

one God, without a knowledge of which mankind have 
been struggHng helplessly in the grasp of the serpent. 
When Israel returns it will necessarily be as possessing 
this truth, not in any merely academic sense, but as a 
working knowledge, and with satisfying proofs thereof, 
otherwise she will not have returned at all ; for if things 
are to continue as before, the restoration would be a mis- 
nomer. It should be plain that Israel can become para- 
mount among the nations only as the truth about God 
becomes paramount in her national and religious life; 
and this truth, let us not forget, is the exact reverse of 
the argument which has been accepted and preached as 
gospel truth to the dire cost of mortals, and an argument 
which is still too commonly received without question in 
Christendom, namely, that it is not wrong or unchristian 
to believe in power, life, intelligence, reality, besides God. 
The reverse of that argument was stated as the First 
Commandment, which is an unequivocal declaration of 
the allness of God, and Israel will be more or less under 
Gentile dominion until she recognizes this truth as the 
foundation of all right thought, and takes her stand 
upon it loyally and fearlessly. 

This was clearly the expectation of the prophets in 
their forecast of latter day events. What else would 
Israel be restored for if it were not to establish the su- 
premacy of her God in the eyes of all the world, which 
means that God will be sanctified in Israel before all the 
heathen. The prophets beheld the restoration as bring- 
ing in the new heavens and new earth " wherein dwelleth 
righteousness," wherein is no evil, no place for it, and 
no belief in it. This is undoubtedly the goal before Is- 
rael today, and in the coming days, and she cannot rest 
until it is reached. 



CHAPTER XXV 
At the Threshold of Fulfilment 

And when these things begin to come to pass, then 
look up, and lift up your heads; for your redemption 
draweth nigh. — Luke 21 : 28. 

Son of man, behold, they of the house of Israel say, 
The vision that he seeth is for many days to come, and 
he prophesieth of the times that are far off. 

Therefore say unto them. Thus saith the Lord God; 
There shall none of My words be prolonged any more, 
but the word which I have spoken shall be done, saith 
the Lord God. — Ezek. 12 : 2^], 28. 

For the vision is yet for an appointed time, but at 
the end it shall speak and not lie : though it tarry, wait 
for it; because it will surely come, it will not tarry. — 
Hab. 2 : 3. 

And he said unto me, These sayings are faithful and 
true : and the Lord God of the holy prophets sent His 
angel to shew unto His servants the things which must 
shortly be done. — Rev. 22 : 6. 

THE Dark Ages, according to general reckoning, 
began at about the bisection of the '' times of the 
Gentiles," and interpreting these times as measuring 
the period which was to follow the loss of Israel, and 
during which the dominion of the carnal mind over the 
thought of Israel and of Christendom was to run its 
course, it is evident that their completion or fulfilment is 
close at hand. Coming on to the nineteenth and twentieth 
centuries, the signs unmistakably point to the loosening of 
the serpent's grasp. It is obvious that a deception could 
not forever succeed in deluding its victims, because of 
the disturbing fact that the truth exists and must some- 
time become known ; and the disturbing truth concerning 
Israel's captivity is, that God's creation is ever free from 
evil, andean never become contaminated or captivated by it. 
It has been the instinctive effort of the evil in human 
consciousness to prevent this truth from becoming 
known, for in the human ignorance of it is evil's only 



264 FOOTSTEPS OF ISRAEL 

opportunity of success: hence the intense opposition of 
the carnal mind to the development of Israel, for the 
reason that in Israel the truth of man's spiritual being as 
the image of God was beginning to come to light. For 
the same reason every Godward impulse that has strug- 
gled for freedom and activity has found the serpent 
waiting to devour it; but notwithstanding the long sub- 
mergence in materialism of the human side of Israel and 
of Christianity, the time is without doubt rapidly ap- 
proaching when the offspring of the woman, referred to 
by St. John, will literally " rule all nations." The dial 
of human destiny points to the passing of the material 
conception of life which has held humanity in an ever 
deepening hopelessness, and is indicating the hour when 
men will seek to learn all things spiritually. 

The nations are peering anxiously across the threshold 
of the morrow with serious misgivings as to what may 
await them there. The process of overturning spoken 
of by Ezekiel has plainly begun and must continue until 
all that obstructs human deliverance from evil is put 
out of the way. Many false beliefs about God which 
for centuries obscured the Father from human view, and 
filled the thoughts of men with doubt and fear, are pass- 
ing away, while false notions about government, law, and 
human rights are losing their stability and power. Hu- 
man thought is at last beginning to awaken to the 
omnipotence of goodness, justice, and love, and the ty- 
rants of hatred and injustice, are being correspondingly 
dispossessed of their position and influence. These are 
undoubtedly the overtumings spoken of by the prophet, 
and are taking place as a direct result of a better under- 
standing of God. The fulfilment of Scriptural prophecy 
is synonymous with the restoring of God's rule among 
men, and this necessarily involves the upsetting of what- 
ever assumes to dispute His reign. "Until He come 
whose right it is," and until "every eye shall see Him," 
the prophetic Word will not have its entire fulfilment, and 
in the meantime this divine overturning must go on and 
on and on. 



i 



AT THE THRESHOLD OF FULFILMENT 265 

During the last half century there has been a decided 
awakening of interest in the significance of the Scrip- 
tural statements relating to the latter days, in the belief 
that that period is close at hand. The center of this 
interest, in its more human aspect, is the predicted res- 
toration of Israel, with which is closely associated, in 
its more religious sense, the expected reappearing of 
the Christ. That we are at the threshold of a mighty 
spiritual awakening, such as might well usher in the 
"day of the Lord," is accepted by many, and that this 
awakening will be accompanied by the unusual events 
w^hich the Scriptures intimate may not unreasonably be 
looked for. Great spiritual revolutions do not arise in 
human consciousness without making their influence 
manifest in outward phenomena. Coming events are 
casting their shadows before, and one need not be him- 
self a prophet to read the signs which are beginning to 
appear both in heaven and earth, that is, both spiritually 
and materially. 

The coming again of Israel into the world's attention, 
not as a somewhat obscure people in a small country in 
Asia, but as the foremost race of our time, is a subject 
of compelling interest, whether or not one is inclined to 
dispute its probability. The belief that Israel, if she re- 
turns at all, will be sufficiently few in number to inhabit 
her former home in Palestine, is not sustained by the 
Scriptures. While she was, undoubtedly, to recover the 
possession of her ancestral lands, and in addition, w^as 
to have dominion over the immense territory promised to 
Abraham, God was to lead her in her exile to a new 
home from which she was not to be removed. While 
Israel at the time of her captivity was a comparatively 
insignificant people, as we regard nations today, and 
while she was banished from her home in the deepest 
disgrace and humiliation, there have been twenty-five 
centuries of opportunity to reform and to develop, and 
the Scriptures inform us that she would do both. 

Therefore no student of the prophetic Scriptures need 
look for Israel to return at the same point, morally. 



266 FOOTSTEPS OF ISRAEL 

physically, or spiritually, at which she went away, else 
her twenty-five centuries of discipline would have been 
in vain. That this discipline was to be a mental experi- 
ence, embracing the thought of the nation, is evident 
from the fact that neither the persons who were taken 
captive, nor their descendants for many generations, ac- 
cording to the terms of the prophecies, would return to 
their own land. The restoration could not possibly mean 
the personal return of the Israelites who were taken 
captive, but was plainly used in a twofold sense as (i) 
the bringing back of Israel to her place in the world as 
a nation, but not necessarily in the same locality, and 
(2) her return spiritually as the people of the covenants. 
The first of these would involve a general awakening to 
the facts of her racial and national identity, and the 
second, her return to that close relationship with God 
which Jacob realized at Peniel, and of which Moses gave 
evidence all the way from Horeb to Pisgah. It was 
certainly something more than the presence in Palestine 
of the northern tribes which was lost to Israel, and that 
something can only be defined and understood in spiritual 
terms. The subject of the restoration, therefore, must 
be approached from its spiritual side, because it cannot be 
satisfactorily or intelligently understood from any other. 
It is true, of course, that Israel had a human aspect 
or application, else that movement would have been 
without means or opportunity to benefit mankind, al- 
though, in the last analysis, there could be but one real 
Israel. What is called national Israel, or the human side, 
was the organization, so to speak, through which the 
spiritual revelation or idea, the real Israel, could have an 
avenue of activity, and by means of which all mankind 
might eventually be reached and redeemed. But when 
the nation, the organization, ceased to express the true 
idea, it became useless for its original purpose, and having 
no spiritual defense of its own became the natural prey 
of the carnal mind. We have seen how the same condi- 
tion arose in the early Christian Church. When it ceased 
to exalt the spiritual ideal of Christianity, as exemplified 



AT THE THRESHOLD OF FULFILMENT 267 

in Christ Jesus, and to perform the works which he 
expected of his followers, it lost its usefulness as an 
organization, and became the prey of worldly prosperity 
and spiritual bankruptcy. 

It has ever been that the perception of an idea has 
preceded its human instrument. It could not be other- 
wise. The spirit must precede the expression of the 
letter and give it life, else it has none. The human mind 
would reverse this order and find life in body or organiza- 
tion, therefore it seeks to presei've the latter as of chief 
importance, a course which has repeatedly resulted in 
disaster. No cause can survive by making the spiritual 
subservient to the material. The safety and success of 
Israel or of Christianity were not contingent upon the 
details and externals of organization, but upon fidelity 
to the spiritual ideal, and upon subordination of the hu- 
man to the divine. The breaking up of the human in- 
strument, as in the case of national Israel, did not imply 
the destruction of the spiritual idea, and when the 
thought of Israel should again be prepared to perceive 
and exalt it, the means for its human activity would also 
be revived. 

It is thus apparent that the restoration of Israel was 
not rendered necessary because of the captivity of the 
persons who comprised the nation at that time, but be- 
cause something was lost sight of that was indispensable 
to human welfare and salvation, and without which not 
only the Israelites but the whole human race would con- 
tinue in captivity. For the same reason the return of 
the Christ was not made necessary simply because the 
personal Jesus disappeared from human sight, but be- 
cause of the failure of the Church to fulfil the mission 
which he entrusted to it. What is needed in either case 
is not the return of person but of the true idea, the re- 
covery or .restoration of that spiritual discernment of 
God's presence and oneness, the loss of which had sent 
the Israelites into exile, and in the Christian era per- 
mitted the Church of Christ to become little more than 
an empty name. 



268 FOOTSTEPS OF ISRAEL 

In the visions of the prophets the reappearance of 
Israel and of the Christ appear to coincide in point of 
time, and the evident conclusion is that they cannot be 
regarded as distinct or independent spiritual events or 
processes, except for the fact that the former involves the 
restoration of national identity to the exiled people of 
Israel, while the latter relates only to the spiritual illu- 
mination which the restored understanding of the spirit 
and power of Christ will bring to men. It will be remem- 
bered that the loss of spiritual Israel wrought the disunity 
and disappearance of a national consciousness, whereas 
the defection of the early Church did not entail the loss of 
human organization, but only of its inspiration and power. 
The rehabilitation of national Israel does not, however, 
imply that she will then become a nation for the first 
time since her exile, for the Scriptures indicate that at 
the time of her restoration she will possess a larger na- 
tional existence than before, but without the knowledge 
of her ancestral lineage or racial identity. It will be 
her own recognition of who and what she is, and the 
same recognition on the part of other nations, that will 
constitute Israel's national restoration. This will not 
necessarily involve any change in her national name, but 
she will acknowledge herself as the Israel of God's cove- 
nants, and as inheritor of the promises, duties, and re- 
sponsibilities which pertain to the descendants of Jacob. 
/This means vastly more than the simplicity of its telling 
might seem to indicate. It will be no small thing for 
a nation to find herself identified beyond reasonable 
question as the people whom, according to the Scriptures, 
God had chosen as an instrument to express His glory, 
to bear His name to the nations, and to be His messenger 
and representative in the earth. > No worldly honor, 
dominion, or prosperity could begin to compare with 
the greatness of that discovery, and the wonderful op- 
portunities and sacred burdens that will accompany it. 
Let no one treat this matter as inconsequential or of light 
moment, for it fills a large place in the Scriptures, and 
will constitute the greatest event in the history of nations. 



AT THE THRESHOLD OF FULFILMENT 269 

The God of Israel, let it be added, is not a mythical 
personage, or a fictitious character in the religious lit- 
erature of a nation, nor is He the central subject or object 
of primitive superstition, — He is the creator and gov- 
ernor of the universe, beside whom there is no other, 
whose actual existence and power were proved again and 
again in the history of the Hebrew race. Let that nation 
or race which comes nearest to the description of Israel, 
as she is to be in the latter days, neither scoff nor doubt, 
but prepare herself to answer to the call. Scepticism 
does not alter facts, nor will it prevent that from being 
wrought out which has the impulsion of truth behind it. 

That the Christ is the expression in its fulness of the 
spiritual ideal of Israel would be more readily seen were 
it not that Christendom generally has been taught to 
think of the former as a man, rather than as the name 
which signified his Messianic mission or ministry. There 
was but one man given the name of Israel, as there was 
but one man given the name of Christ, but no one now 
thinks of Israel as a man. The restoration or reappearing 
of Israel is never spoken of, by either Christians or Jews, 
as the return of the person of Jacob. The word Israel 
was used in a distinctive sense, and signified something 
which had existence before the birth of Jacob, and which 
was too great to be measured by any human personality 
or to be compressed within the limits of solar time. The 
same must be true also in respect to Christ, which, the 
Scripture says, was " without beginning of years or end 
of days," a description which could not be applied to any 
man born of woman. 

Israel was the designation of that spiritual movement 
which had been going on in the consciousness of the 
Hebrew people, preparing the way for that perfect revela- 
tion of God which came through Jesus, and which was 
demonstrated in its completeness by him. Because he 
was the avenue of the Messianic truth, he was given the 
title of Christ, as Jacob before him had been given the 
title of Israel. If Christ was intended to be the personal 
name of the son of Mary, the angel would not have 



2^o FOOTSTEPS OF ISRAEL 

instructed Joseph to give him the common name of Jesus. 
The beHef that the Christ was identical with the flesh and 
blood of the human Jesus, which gained currency among 
the early Christians, eventuated in the dogma that he is 
to return to earth as a physical personality. This settled 
conviction was due, in part, to a misapprehension of the 
prophecies relating to the Second Advent, or, perhaps 
more correctly, to a misapprehension of the conditions 
which would make a second coming necessary, and in 
part to a deified conception of the personal Jesus. This 
deification of the great Teacher, in the place of obedience 
to his teachings, gave rise to the assumption that Christ 
left the earth at his ascension, notwithstanding the as- 
surance, "Lo, I am with you alway." 

It will be remembered that Jesus almost invariably 
spoke of God as the Father, and, like a true Israelite, he 
never intimated that there was more than one God. The 
First Commandment gives the ke3mote of "the alone 
God," but this keynote is lost when we attempt the impos- 
sible, namely, to increase the number of the infinite. " In 
that day," said the prophet Zechariah, "shall there be one 
Lord, and his name one," and this oneness of divinity 
runs throughout the entire Scriptural revelation, and is 
summed up by St. John in the Apocalypse as " the Alpha 
and Omega," or the all-inclusive One. Let us hold fast 
to this infinite One and All, for no other God pertains 
to Israel, and in the day of the restoration His name 
shall be One. 

The student who has carefully followed the develop- 
ment of the spiritual idea of God, as first brought forth 
in Israel, and as presented in the writings of her prophets 
and poets, will see that in the Messiah the fulness of 
this idea was to appear. On various occasions Jesus 
plainly and conclusively difiFerentiated between himself 
and the Father. It is clearly the work of the carnal 
mind that a covering of mystery has been permitted to 
conceal from human understanding the true relation be- 
tween Jesus and the Father, lest mortals should see that 
they also might reach that same relationship by attaining 



AT THE THRESHOLD OF FULFILMENT 271 

the same Mind, and striving to do the same works, even 
as the Master had enjoined. The controversies over 
the personahty of Jesus and the Godhead which beset the 
early Church, and which only resulted in confusing the 
thoughts of Christians through succeeding centuries, did 
not contribute to the strength or usefulness of Chris- 
tianity. It was not within the province of the Church 
fathers to dogmatize about the nature or person of Deity, 
but to obey the First Commandment, and to follow the 
Christ in their lives. " Why call ye me Lord, Lord," 
said Jesus, " and do not the things which I say ? " Had 
these Church leaders, and their successors, devoted their 
attention to repeating the works of the Master, and to 
obeying the spirit and letter of his teachings, instead 
of contending over their different interpretations, and of 
reading into the gospels and epistles their ow^n personal 
views, and forcing these views into church creeds, the 
mission of our Saviour might have been continued, and 
the falling away and subsequent apostasy of the Church 
avoided. The deplorable consequences of injecting un- 
inspired opinions and pagan doctrines into the teachings 
of the Christian Church should arouse us to the danger 
of repeating their mistakes or of adopting their unde- 
monstrable and unlivable dogmas. 

Jesus taught no confusing or mystical doctrines, for 
the simple but sufficient reason that his teachings could 
be lived by his followers, and whatever may be proved 
in practice is not open to argument or contention. The 
mistake of the early Church lay in entering into dis- 
putes over theories which were extraneous to Jesus' 
teachings, instead of steadfastly obeying these teachings, 
a course which would have blessed humanity abundantly, 
and established the Church upon an impregnable founda- 
tion. Probably no field is more prolific of conflicting 
theories and opinions than that of religion, notwithstand- 
ing the fact that Jesus presented a simple and practical 
course of living by means of which all may work out 
their salvation from evil. 

The assumption that Jesus would return in the latter 



2J2 FOOTSTEPS OF ISRAEL 

days as a corporeal personality doubtless arose from the 
passage in Acts which reads, " this same Jesus, which is 
taken up from you into heaven, shall so come in like 
manner as ye have seen him go into heaven." And 
in what manner did they see him go? Not as one who 
had taught them to revere the material concept of man, 
the man of dust, but as one who was laying it down, not 
only for himself but for their sakes and for the world. 
He was leaving them as the conqueror over death, the 
corruption of the grave, and over the sense of matter 
itself. He had been working up to this accomplishment 
from the beginning of his career. He had been bringing 
matter into subjection, changing water into wine, walk- 
ing on the waves, raising the dead, passing through 
closed doors, making the diseased whole, etc., and now his 
pure spiritual consciousness was rising above the ma- 
terial sense altogether, so that he became invisible to 
the physical sense of his disciples. In the fulness of 
time, when the human understanding should have be- 
come prepared for it, he would be seen to return in the 
same manner, that is as having risen above all materi- 
ality, not as being still in possession of the flesh. 

Jesus never taught that the Christ, the truth about 
God, would leave the world in the spiritual or real sense ; 
it was only the human material concept of the Messiah 
that it was "" expedient " should be taken away, in order 
that the Comforter, the spiritual sense of the Christ, 
might become known. Jesus recognized the tendency, 
even in his own day, to exalt his human personality, 
and the danger attaching to such a course. We read 
that after feeding the five thousand with the five 
loaves, he went away alone lest the people should forcibly 
"make him a king." He taught very plainly that he 
had not come to be worshipped, but to sen^e and to save. 
If it was not right for the Jews to worship his per- 
sonality in that day, it must be equally wrong for Chris- 
tians to do this today. 

Jesus' statement that " the kingdom of God cometh 
not with observation," or to the outward appearance, but 



AT THE THRESHOLD OF FULFILMENT 273 

is " within you," within a man's cognizance of divine 
things, should indicate that when the Christ comes again, 
it will be to the individual spiritual consciousness, and 
not as a material form. The prediction that " every eye 
shall see him " would be impossible of fulfilment, with 
the present limitation of human sight, for a personal 
descent could be visible to only a portion of the earth's 
inhabitants. Deity, being omnipresent, could not be 
more present than He now is, except that the mate- 
riality of human consciousness hides this divinity from 
view, so that what is plainly needed is not more mate- 
rial but more spiritual vision. Even were Jesus to 
appear again in a physical fonii, it would not lessen one 
iota of the demand for human reg'eneration, for an in- 
dividual is made better only as he forsakes evil and obeys 
the law of good. It is perfectly certain that unless the 
kingdom of God is welcomed into the hearts of men, no 
personal appearing can establish it upon the earth. 

Paul apparently recognized this w^hen he said, " Al- 
though we have known Christ after the flesh, yet now 
henceforth know we him no more." The apostle under- 
stood God to be Spirit, but popular belief would reverse 
his statement to the Athenians, and say, " In matter we 
live and move and have our being." To conceive of 
God, or of God's idea, as inhabiting flesh and blood, is to 
contradict the Scriptural statement, that the flesh and 
Spirit are contrary the one to the other, and similar pas- 
sages. If it be true that man lives in God, man must live 
in Spirit and spiritually, not materially; and Christ, his 
Saviour from the flesh, would necessarily appear to his 
understanding in the spiritual sense, since " spiritual 
things," we are taught, are "spiritually discerned." It 
is for this spiritual appearing, this transforming percep- 
tion of divinity, that we should not only be waiting and 
watching for, but preparing. 

But what has all this to do with Israel ? Everything ; 
for all that pertains to the true idea of Israel is bound 
up with the truth which declares God, and is therefore 
inseparable from the Christ, whether in the first century 



274 FOOTSTEPS OF ISRAEL 

or the twentieth. It has been plainly seen that Israel must 
realize her restoration through an understanding of 
the Scriptures, that is through a knowledge of the Christ, 
or divine Truth, to which the Scriptures point and which 
they reveal from Genesis to Revelation. In other words, 
Israel must return from her exile through the practice of 
Christianity, because there is no other possible way. 

Israelite and Christian are terms which differ in degree 
but not in quality or character, and in their true essence 
are identical. Jesus said to Nathaniel, *' Behold an Israelite 
indeed " ; and this Israelite saw in Jesus the " Son of 
God" and the "King of Israel." The Messiah said of 
the great Hebrew patriarch, "Abraham rejoiced to see 
my day, and he saw it, and was glad," by which he evi- 
dently meant that what Abraham had glimpsed of the 
truth about God was, in its degree, the same that Jesus 
presented. Abraham saw the day of Christianity as the 
goal towards which his seed were to journey. It was 
Jacob's perception of the same truth which was given 
the designation of Israel, a name which was to mark his 
descendants, in something more than racial difference, 
from the other peoples of the earth. The seed of Jacob 
were called the children of Israel, or the Israelites, 
whether they were individually true to the ideal of Israel 
or not; in the same way that members of the Anglo- 
Saxon race are known as Christians, whether or not they 
individually conform to the teachings of Christ. 

The consummation of the journey of Israel during 
six thousand years will not be the occurrence of a day or 
of a year, but of a period. This prophetical fulfilment 
is undoubtedly taking place, but of the time of its com- 
pletion " knoweth no man." That the Christ, in a higher 
meaning than ever before, is knocking at the door of 
human consciousness cannot be questioned, but how great 
or how prolonged may be the ordeal required in finally 
establishing God's rule among men, the Scriptures do not 
reveal. 



CHAPTER XXVI 
Anglo-Israel: The Second Witness 

I will ordain a place for My people Israel, and will 
plant them, and they shall dwell in their place, and 
shall be moved no more. — I Chron. 17: 9. 

He shall cause them that come of Jacob to take root; 
Israel shall blossom and bud, and fill the face of the 
world with fruit. 

For thou shalt break forth on the right hand and on 
the left ; and thy seed shall inherit the Gentiles, and 
make the desolate cities to be inhabited. 

And their seed shall be known among the Gentiles, 
and their offspring among the people : all that see them 
shall acknowledge them, that they are the seed which the 
Lord hath blessed. 

And the Gentiles shall see thy righteousness, and all 
kings thy glory: and thou shalt be called by a new 
name, which the mouth of the Lord shall name. — 
IsA. 27 : 6 ; 54 : 3 ; 61 : 9 ; 62 : 2. 

THE Scriptures are so definite and outspoken on the 
subject of Israel's restoration as a nation, that there 
is no ground for the claim that that restoration will 
be fulfilled in its spiritual meaning only. In the prophecies 
the spiritual and national phases of Israel's return are 
parallel, and it is not implied that either of these will 
supplant the other or render its existence and functions 
unnecessary. The importance of spiritual Israel cannot 
be overestimated; but literal Israel, the Israel that the 
eyes can look upon, must also have its place " while the 
earth remaineth." If, then, we are to accept the state- 
ments of Holy Writ, we must be ready to acknowledge 
that the house of Joseph, the representative tribe of Israel, 
has not been literally obliterated any more than has the 
house of Judah, and must be as capable of being dis- 
closed to the world, and will be so disclosed when the 
time comes for the veil to be drawn aside. 

The Mosaic law required a second witness for the 
substantiation of evidence, and it is this second or con- 



276 FOOTSTEPS OF ISRAEL 

firmatory witness with which the present chapter is 
mainly concerned. We are not taught that the res- 
toration of Israel would be one-sided, and it is a reflec- 
tion upon the verity of the Scriptures to describe it thus. 
The literal side of a church is its organization and mem- 
bership, without which it would have no present means 
or avenue for its identity and activity. It is not other- 
wise with Israel, which we may look upon as the great 
spiritual church of the early ages, the spiritual center 
out of which the progress and enlightenment of the race 
have come. A New Testament writer speaks of the 
church as the body of Christ, and when the church re- 
turns to her first vision of the great Physician and Re- 
deemer, it will not mean the loss of that body, but its 
restoration to life and power. In like manner we should 
not expect Israel to return from her captivity without a 
body or without an outward medium of expression but 
rather that that body will be restored to its proper place 
and purpose. Let us assume that these things are too 
obviously true for argument, for it is certain that until 
human thought is wholly regenerated, spiritual truth will 
require human channels through which to become hu- 
manly operative and tangible. 

The specious argument, that Israel's national recovery 
is of no consequence because the world has all that it 
needs in Christianity, not only belittles the place which 
the Scriptures assign to that people, but ignores two very 
pertinent facts : ( i ) that Christianity itself, as presented 
in creeds and doctrines, must return from its captivity 
to materialism and unbelief before it can do the things 
which Jesus said would redeem the world from its errors ; 
(2) that the exclusion of the second witness would rob 
humanity of the complete verification of the Scriptures 
and of the validity of God's covenants therein recorded. 

To summarize the situation in a few words : the 
spiritual perception of truth which came through "the 
woman " found the least resistance among the Israelites, 
who were the outcome through Jacob of the selective 
process which had been going on for upwards of twenty 



ANGLO-ISRAEL: THE SECOND WITNESS 277 

centuries. The descendants of Jacob, who were nationally 
known as Israel, were to be a witness in the world 
to the one God, and an instrument for making His power 
known to men. This nation later fell into idolatry, wor- 
shipping other gods, as Christians are doing today under 
different names, and was carried captive out of her own 
land to endure a long period of exile, during which she 
was to become unknown to herself and unknown to the 
world as the Israel of former days. In the latter days, 
according to the Scriptures, this exiled race is to be 
brought forth from her long concealment and resume 
her place in the family of nations. 

As the end of the times of the Gentiles drew near, an 
interest began to be felt in the possible existence and 
whereabouts of Israel, and efforts were made to locate 
her among some of the more insignificant nations and 
in the most unlikely places. The prevalent but deplorable 
lack of information respecting the status of Israel at 
the time of her restoration may be judged by a statement 
in one of the encyclopedias, to the effect that one nation 
answers to the specified conditions about as well as an- 
other. This condition is due in large part to the silence 
and indifference w^hich the churches generally have main- 
tained towards this subject. The only official reference 
on the part of any of the Christian denominations, imply- 
ing that Israel is to be restored, which has come to the 
attention of the writer, is found in the Church Manual 
of The First Church of Christ, Scientist, in Boston, 
which is The Mother Church of the Christian Science 
denomination throughout the world. In a *' Historical 
Sketch," briefly relating the history of the organization, 
it reads : " Mrs. Eddy was appointed on the committee 
to draft the Tenets of the Mother Church — the chief 
corner-stone whereof is, that Christian Science, as taught 
and demonstrated by our Master, casts out error, heals 
the sick^ and restores the lost Israel : for * the stone which 
the builders rejected, the same is become the head of the 
corner.' " 

The claim that the Anglo-Saxon or English-speaking 



278 FOOTSTEPS OF ISRAEL 

race is modern Israel is something more than an argu- 
ment or a sentimental fancy. It is presented with a 
mass of detailed evidence, in a literature of its own, 
which covers every aspect of national identification, and 
which is too convincing to the thoughtful and unprej- 
udiced reader to be reasonably contradicted. While 
much of the picture remains to be filled in, the general 
outline and perspective are clear and true. The de- 
scription of Israel when she shall emerge from her past 
obscurity, which is furnished by the Hebrew prophets, 
corresponds to no other race or nationality. A careful 
survey of the races and peoples of the world today leaves 
no possible competitor in the field. The marks of identi- 
fication which are given in the Scriptures are evident 
alone in the Anglo-Saxon people, a fact which remains 
unaffected by idle controversy or sceptical indifference. 

The opening sentence of Green's History of the Eng- 
lish People reads, " For the fatherland of the English 
race we must look far away from England itself," and 
then the historian proceeds to locate it in northern 
Europe; but he does not go back beyond the fifth cen- 
tury. Had he gone a little further in his exploration 
he would have found the fatherland of the English race 
in Palestine. Briefly stated, as may be learned from 
various sources, when the Israelites broke from their 
Assyrian captivity, at a time when their captors were 
engaged in war, they made their way along the southern 
shore of the Caspian Sea, and gradually on into central 
and northern Europe, where Green found them in the 
fifth century as Angles, Jutes, Saxons, etc. All this 
ground has been gone over carefully again and again, 
and in view of the fact that, according to the Scriptures, 
the Israelites were to be neither exterminated nor ab- 
sorbed by Gentile races, but were to develop in the " isles 
of the sea," into a mighty people, both in number and 
power, there is no sufficient reason for disputing the 
evidence, disclosed by loving and devout research, which 
identifies the English people with the ancient house of 
Israel. This, of course, does not apply to the Jews, who 



ANGLO-ISRAEL: THE SECOND WITNESS 279 

have remained throughout their separation and dispersion 
a marked race, entirely distinct from their brethren of 
Israel. 

Contrary to the outlandish fiction which has been and 
still is taught in our schools, in the name of history, the 
inhabitants of Britain at the time of Caesar's invasion 
v^ere not a race of savages and illiterate barbarians. 
They were the equals of their Roman invaders in learn- 
ing, and their superiors in religion and morals. Britain 
was probably the most anciently settled of the countries 
of Europe, the recorded genealogy of whose kings goes 
back hundreds of years before the founding of Rome. 
It was the one country which Rome failed to conquer, 
with the exception of the southern portion which it was 
subsequently forced to relinquish. Britain was the first 
country to adopt Christianity nationally, a significant fact 
in its bearing upon the identity of Israel. The Gospel 
was brought to Britain direct from Palestine by Joseph 
of Arimathea and others within a few years of the Mas- 
ter's ascension, and later by St. Paul, the British royal 
family being among the first converts. Some idea of 
the extent of the Christianization of the island may be 
had from the fact that ten thousand British Christians 
perished in the Diocletian persecution. Authorities for 
these and other related facts are given in Rev. R. W. 
Morgan's St. Paul in Britain. 

The British Isles were not unknown to the ancients, 
and were doubtless identical with "the isles that are 
afar off" mentioned in the Scriptures. The trade in 
tin, of which Britain was the earliest source of supply, 
would naturally involve some measure of development 
and colonization, in which the Hebrews would in all 
probability participate, especially the Danites, whose ter- 
ritory lay along the sea and who engaged in maritime 
commerce. It has been supposed that, long before the 
captivity, Ireland had been colonized by the Danites and 
Phoenicians, and that the prophet Jeremiah, following 
the captivity of Judah, journeyed with a small company 
to that country and remained there, a belief which is 



28o FOOTSTEPS OF ISRAEL 

supported by strong circumstantial evidence. It is also 
highly probable that during the Assyrian subjugation 
of the northern kingdom many of the Israelites made 
their way to the British Isles and permanently located 
there. St. Paul and other early Christian missionaries 
were no doubt aware of the Hebrew colonization of 
Britain, and were attracted there on that account, for 
did not Jesus say that he had come to " the lost sheep 
of the house of Israel"? 

But the strength of the Anglo-Israel cause does not 
lie in tracing the devious ways by which the exiles even- 
tually found their gathering place in the " isles of the 
sea"; or in the fact that the genealogy of the Royal 
House of Britain goes back in an unbroken line, through 
the family of the mother of Jesus, to the first King David 
of Israel ; nor does it lie in the thousand and one intensely 
interesting links of human evidence which connect the 
English-speaking people of the British Empire and the 
United States with the Israel of the Old Testament. 
This chain of evidence should not be wanting, but it is 
what this race is ready to be and to do that must furnish 
the final proof of her heirship of the covenants. 

The discovery of lost Israel in the Anglo-Saxons does 
not crown that race with a halo of vainglory, rather 
does it invest that people with a lasting and sacred re- 
sponsibility to God and to mankind. The bare proof 
that the Anglo-Saxons are Israelites possesses nothing 
more than passing interest, unless that race is ready to 
occupy the place and fulfil the mission which God gave 
to Israel. The resurrection of buried Israel to life and 
light is for something far greater than can be expressed-, 
in material terms. It is that she may be literally God's 
"battle-axe and weapons of war," not against other 
peoples, but against the evils which oppress mankind. 
It is that she may be His witness, that is the demonstrator 
of God, to all the Gentile peoples of the earth; for how 
else could God be sanctified in Israel? Certainly not by 
external proofs of our racial descent from Jacob, or by 
the possession of predominant power and influence, or 



ANGLO-ISRAEL: THE SECOND WITNESS 281 

because we hold the gateways of the world, but by puri- 
fying our land of its idolatries, and by exalting God's 
name in righteousness and true holiness. 

The return of Israel as a worshipper of false gods 
would naturally be anomalous. Neither will she return 
as the special charge of a national Jehovah, for in that 
limited and selfish concept were planted the seeds of 
_ her downfall, because it developed a false view of Deity 
as humanly partial and capricious. She will have learned 
that God was not the God of Israel in any exclusively 
proprietary sense, but only because His oneness was ac- 
knowledged there. Jesus never spoke of the Father as 
a national or tribal Deity; nor did he refer to Him as 
Jehovah. He had risen above the superstitious and stulti- 
fying beliefs of a past age, and was opening a new and 
brighter chapter in the revelation of man's relation to 
God, and the Israel of whom Jesus was King must rise to 
the same recognition and demonstration of the Father, 
if the prophets' visions of the restoration are to be 
realized. Is the Anglo-Saxon race ready to do this? 

The importance of the second witness should be too 
obvious to be rashly controverted, hence the necessity 
that this witness shall be forthcoming at the proper time. 
With the disappearance of spiritual Israel this second 
witness was no longer needed, and passed into a state 
of virtual oblivion, until the return of spiritual Israel 
should call it forth. The " dry bones " of Ezekiel's vision, 
to be revived by the winds of God, represent the second 
witness, which shall " stand up upon their feet, an exceed- 
ing great army." These bones have been dried up so long 
that many of them blandly deny the necessity of coming 
to life again, but the quickening of the Spirit will be 
found irresistible, despite their sleepy protests that it 
makes no difference where or who the Israelites are 
today; and the whole house of Israel, united with wander- 
ing Judah, must again stand before the world, "an ex- 
ceeding great army." 

The word in the Hebrew which is translated " spirit" 
means wind or air, so that the breath from the four 



282 FOOTSTEPS OF ISRAEL 

winds, which breathed upon these dry bones, may well 
be the restoration of spiritual Israel sending forth its 
quickening influence from every part of the world. 
Under this compelling power, Israel of the flesh, hu- 
man, literal Israel, wiU open her eyes to the facts of 
her real identity, and in humility behold the verification 
of the Scripture, " None can stay His hand." There is 
no power on earth that can withhold this resurrection 
when the time has come. The truth of the Scriptures 
is surely not a matter of small importance. Since the 
return of literal Israel has been given such a prominent 
place in the prophetic Scriptures, it must be of some con- 
sequence that it shall take place. The infidel has scoffed 
at the Bible because lost Israel was not restored as prom- 
ised, — is the believer to join in the scoff by minimiz- 
ing the necessity or importance of this restoration? In 
various instances in the life of Jesus we read that certain 
things were done in fulfilment of the Scriptures — for 
example when he rode into Jerusalem upon an ass^s colt. 
The disciples afterwards remembered "that these things 
were written of him.'' Why, then, should it be thought 
of no value that the Scriptures be fulfilled in these days 
also? 

It may be well to remind the reader again that human 
nationalities embody types of human thought, and that 
these types are preserved although individuals and gener- 
ations pass, a fact which is verified, again and again, 
in the pages of history. From her inception Israel ex- 
pressed the highest spiritual thought among the nations of 
the earth, and was therefore more susceptible to spiritual 
discernment and the reception of divine revelation. This 
type or quality of thought was not to be irreparably lost 
in the captivity, but by its very nature was bound to 
revive, and to develop to an even greater degree because 
of the refining experiences of the exile. Beyond question 
the same type of thought, and in the same relative sense, 
is found today in the Anglo-Saxon race, and in those 
of other races who have mentally adopted and assimilated 
her ideals. This mental coincidence with the Israel of 



ANGLO-ISRAEL: THE SECOND WITNESS 283 

the Scriptures is the most convincing or satisfying mark 
of identification that can be produced, unless one ignores 
the metaphysical constituency of human history. The 
nation whose mentality is nearest to the discernment of 
divine truth is the nation that must correspond with the 
line of Israel. When it is recognized that the types of 
thought which inhere in races are not interchangeable, 
and that it is the best in any nation which survives the 
wear of time and the friction of adversity, it will be seen 
that the race which today presents the mental and spirit- 
ual qualities of the ancient people of God must be, beyond 
peradventure, the same race and people. 

Too much attention is sometimes given, albeit with 
worthy motives, to external evidences in the effort to 
identify national Israel, for all such testimony is inciden- 
tal rather than fundamental. It should be apparent that 
the better things which made Israel different in the early 
period of her history must necessarily be the determina- 
tive evidence in identifying Israel in the present day. 
It may be proper on occasions to emphasize the fact of 
Anglo-Saxon supremacy; it may be well to point to the 
wealth, prosperity, broad dominions, etc., of this race, 
since these were prophesied of Israel in the time of her 
restoration; but all these things are purely secondary to 
the identity of mind or consciousness. 

When we consider the moral and religious ideals of 
Anglo-Saxondom, together with her almost universal 
acknowledgment of the God of Israel, and her devotion 
to the Hebrew Scriptures ; and when we add to these the 
multiplying evidences of language, history, and prophecy, 
there is no reasonable ground for disputing the Israelitish 
origin of this race. Israel was not doomed to extinction, 
but on the contrary the promise in the Scriptures was 
that she should be presented. 

In the latter days Israel w^as to be found as a company 
or federation of nations, a federation of peoples united 
by a common ancestry, and by common ethical and re- 
ligious ideals. America is naturally included in that fed- 
eration, although the union is not expressed in political 



284 FOOTSTEPS OF ISRAEL 

terms. In the English language, law, literature, and 
government, the God which was declared in Horeb and 
in Sinai, which called Abraham out of idolatry, and 
which brought enslaved Israel out of Egypt, is acknowl- 
edged as the central fact in human affairs, notwithstand- 
ing that we as a race move slowly towards the more 
practical application of the facts of divinity. 

At the same time it must be remembered that the 
Anglo-Saxo^ race is only touching the hem of her privi- 
leges and duties as the inheritor of Israel's destiny. 
The discovery of Israel in the British Empire and in the 
United States is but one link in a chain whose end is the 
establishment of Christ's kingdom on the earth. Another 
link in this chain is the union of Judah with Israel, so 
that they shall again have one God, and take their places 
in a common heritage. This has not yet been accom- 
plished. While Israel accepted the Messiah and became 
Christian, Judah, or the Jews, rejected the Messiah and 
have remained as they were. The Jew is evidently wait- 
ing for a presentation of Christianity that he can under- 
stand; not as a set of doctrines and dogmas over which 
Christendom itself has quarreled for centuries, but as 
the redemptive truth which he can lay hold of and 
demonstrate, and which is infinitely greater than a human 
person or a church creed. Judah's wanderings and per- 
secutions will cease when she gets this vision of the 
Christ, and wakens from her age-long hatred and mis- 
understanding of the great Nazarene. 

A descendant of the Davidic dynasty, the sceptre fam- 
ily of Judah, sits on the throne of England. The unicorn 
of Israel and the lion of Judah are on the crest of 
her kings, and no other nation and no college of 
heraldry have challenged their right to have them there. 
No nation and no royal line can be named which would 
become them more, — but how came they there ? The 
crests of ancient kings are not lying in the street to be 
picked up by the passer-by. Obviously they are there 
because they rightly belong there. These may seem 
small things in themselves, but they fit into the picture, 



ANGLO-ISRAEL: THE SECOND WITNESS 285 

and with many others point so uniformly in the same 
direction that there is nothing to do but to follow. 

Archbishop Trench's On the Study of Words traces 
the history of the word " thrall " as descending " to us 
from a period when it was the custom to thrill or drill the 
ear of a slave in token of servitude; a custom in use 
among the Jews (Deut. 15:17), and retained by our 
Anglo-Saxon forefathers, who were wont to pierce at the 
church-door the ears of their bondservants." Why did the 
writer use the word "retained" rather than "adopted," 
unless " our Anglo-Saxon forefathers " were of Israel- 
itish origin? One may adopt the customs of another 
race, but we do not retain customs which were not ours 
originally. And how would the Anglo-Saxons of the 
early centuries of the Christian era be likely to know of 
the customs of the Israelites in such matters? 

An English writer, in reviewing Lord Bryce's Ameri- 
can Commonwealth, said, " It needs no prophet to per- 
ceive that the race (Anglo-Saxon) is to dominate the 
world when time is old enough." In other words, when 
Gentile dominion shall have worn itself out, the spiritual 
ideals of Israel shall predominate, and her government 
hold the sovereign place. In the Scriptures this dominion 
was promised to Israel; then, if the identity of Anglo- 
Saxon-Israel be not genuine, or if it be not admitted, to 
what other of the world's races would this dominion 
more logically pass? What other people gives greater 
promise of blessing the families of the earth by the ad- 
ministration of power? 

Mr. George R. Parkin, In a magazine article back in 
the eighties, writes, " The development of the Anglo- 
Saxon race . . . has become, within the last century, 
the chief factor and central feature in human history." 
This Is a strong and startling statement, If this race is 
not the Israel of the Old Testament, because, In such a 
case. It would mean that the prophecies in Holy Writ 
regarding the restoration are proved false, for in the 
foregoing sentence the writer has described the relative 
position of Israel in the latter days. If the Anglo-Saxon 



286 FOOTSTEPS OF ISRAEL 

race is of Gentile lineage, yet is occupying the place and 
fulfilling the destiny of Israel, the argument of the in- 
fidel is well founded, and we shall have to discredit the 
statements not only of a large portion of the Old Testa- 
ment, but of many important passages in the New. 

The recognition and acknowledgment of our racial 
origin and history as identical with Israel would not 
mean that Englishmen and Americans would henceforth 
call themselves Israelites or Hebrews. Shakespeare has 
told us that another name for a rose would not change 
its nature and qualities, neither would the fact that Israel 
is emerging from her long obscurity under a new name 
affect the great destiny which lies before her. The 
prophets indicate that she will not only bear another 
name but speak another language in the day of her return. 
While it might not seem essential from one point of 
view for the descendants of Jacob, other than the Jews, 
to be nationally or otherwise identified, the value of 
preserving unbroken the chain of Scriptural testimony, 
as Jesus took care to preserve it, need not be questioned. 

It is becoming more and more apparent that the Anglo- 
Saxons in the British Empire and in the United States 
are only politically divided. They are the two branches 
of the main trunk of Israel, and have the same perspec- 
tive in history and in prophecy. They are joined in the 
brotherhood of a common destiny to bear the light of 
divine Truth to the dark places of the earth. Subtle 
and insidious influences have been persistently at work 
to forestall this unity, and to prevent an understanding 
friendship between these two great peoples, because in 
this unity and friendship lie the safeguard of human 
democracy and the assurance of world progress. The 
keynote of the serpent's suggestions from the beginning 
has been division, not unity. To the human senses this 
evil activity began by insisting upon man's separation 
from his Maker, representing him as possessing- a dif- 
ferent mind, and as inhabiting a sphere outside the di- 
vine presence. The natural outcome of accepting these 
suggestions has been the separation of men from each 



ANGLQ-ISRAEL: THE SECOND WITNESS 2'^j 

other, resulting in a conflict rather than a community 
of interest. 

Because of their common religious ideals, the unity 
between these nations, or rather this "company of na- 
tions,'' will result from spiritual progress, not political 
expediency ; therefore it will not be severed by the selfish 
ambitions of politicians or by the efforts of alien enemies. 
This alliance of the two families of the house of Joseph, 
known today as Britain and America, is not only neces- 
sary to the future peace of the race, but to its ultimate 
evangelization. 

The restoration of Israel as foretold by her prophets, 
and as viewed in its higher significance, will kindle " the 
desire of all nations " for that spiritual consciousness of 
life which the practice of genuine Christianity brings to 
men. The standard-bearers of Israel in the days of her 
return will be found marching together on the side of 
the best things which that race has stood for, that the 
prophecy may be fulfilled in her, " and they shall be My 
people." 



CHAPTER XXVII 
Israel's New Covenant 

Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, when I will 
make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with 
the house of Judah: 

For this is the covenant that I will make with the 
house of Israel ... I will put My laws into their 
mind, and write them in their hearts; and I will be to 
them a God, and they shall be to Me a people. — Heb. 
8:8, 10. 

I have yet many things to say unto you, but ye can- 
not bear them now. 

But when the Comforter is come, whom I will send 
unto you from the Father, even the Spirit of truth, 
which proceedeth from the Father, he shall testify of 
me. — John i6 : 12; 15 •.26. 

MORE than nineteen centuries had come and gone 
since Jesus preached the gospel of the new birth, 
and the consciousness of Christendom still re- 
mained under Gentile oppression, or the rule of materi- 
alism. The mission of Christ was to break this yoke, 
first in the experience of his followers, and through them 
of all mankind; but human thought proved to be too 
deeply buried in the dust to be ready for the conquest 
of the carnal senses, or even to recognize that Chris- 
tianity demanded this conquest. How long before the 
dream of consciousness in matter, gorging itself with 
the husks of sensualism, would wear itself out in the 
suffering which attends it, and how soon the dawn of 
the spiritual facts of life would begin to appear, might 
well have been the question of the watchers throughout 
the long night of Israel's captivity. 

One fact had been calling for the attention of earnest 
thinkers, and the call was becoming louder and more 
imperative, and that was that if the Christianization of 
the world were to be accomplished, there would have to 



ISRAEL'S NEW COVENANT 289 

be a return to the course mapped out by the Founder of 
Christianity; that is to say, Christendom would need 
to regain the vision of the Christ which he had presented 
Jesus knew that his work could not ultimate in failure 
My words shall not pass away," he said, but that they 
might for a time be forgotten in their true significance 
and would have to be brought again to remembrance, is 
imphed in his promise of the Comforter. In the apostolic 
writings this revival of Christian faith, or Christianity's 
new day, is spoken of as "the day of the Lord " It is 
logical to conclude that the apostles would not have re- 
ferred to that day in the future tense if it had been 
realized in their own time, or if the fulness of the truth 
taught by Christ Jesus were embodied in the church of 
that age. 

It is certain that so long as the fleshly sense continues 
to sway the thoughts of Christendom, the day of the 
-Lord, the day of mankind's redemption, has not fully 
dawned there. The conclusion is obvious, even to an 
unbeliever, that only as consciousness and life are be- 
coming less material, can one truly merit the distinction 
of being a disciple of Christ. The Christian world has 
been held m the grasp of the carnal mind simply because 
it has not recognized that the reign of Spirit is supreme 
m the earth; and it was this faith in matter still prev- 
alent in the church and the consequent loss of spiritual 
power, which constituted the necessity for a return to 
the teaching and practice of Christ Jesus 

If we have followed carefully the course of Israel 

towards a better understanding of God, as recorded in 

the Scriptures, we have seen that its ultimate goal was 

he attainment of a purely spiritual consciousness of 

jJ: f"i I !,* l^^ ^?''^^' *^ Deliverer to whom all 
Israel looked forward m hope and anticipation, came 
to lead humanity to that goal. Jesus taught that he 
came forth from the Father to do His will or, as the 
apostle phrased ,t, to "destroy the works of the devil " 
the carnal mmd He certainly did not come to validate 
the demands of so-called physical sense, but he plainly 



290 FOOTSTEPS OF ISRAEL 

taught that the way of salvation which he was blazing 
for mankind lay through the denial of that sense; hence 
the spiritual darkness which later spread over the Church 
because of the failure to follow him in his crucifixion 
of materiality, and the consequent failure to share in 
his spiritual resurrection. 

Coming on to the middle of the nineteenth century 
we find the same conditions continuing as they had been. 
The sturdy Protestantism which had won liberty of con- 
science and an open Bible laid its neck unresistingly 
under the heel of materialism, an oppression more merci- 
less and tyrannical than the ecclesiasticism of the Dark 
Ages, and more hopeless because it was believed to be 
divinely sanctioned. Although the Gospel of Christ 
Jesus was preached to men as providing their relief from 
sin, the door of that divine Gospel was closed upon their 
relief from the ills and evils of the flesh. Since it is 
not possible that Christ's garment could be thus divided, 
the natural result was that the consciousness of sin, as 
wdl as of its effects in disease and death, was not over- 
come. Materialism profanely sat on the throne of Spirit, 
and none dared to openly question its decrees. It was 
a time of spiritual dearth and darkness, when men were 
trying to subsist on the ** serpent's meat," the dry dust 
of barren doctrines, and the Church slumbered over the 
tarrying of the bridegroom. 

Looking forward to a new and better era of thought, 
when superstitious credulity should no longer dominate 
the domain of religion and good would rule in the hearts 
of men because it was understood and loved, Jeremiah 
was moved to write, " Behold, the days come, saith the 
Lord, that I will make a new covenant with the house of 
Israel, and with the house of Judah." And the writer 
of the book of Hebrews thus continues the quotation: 
"For this is the covenant that I will make with the 
house of Israel after those days, saith the Lord; I will 
put My laws into their mind, and write them in their 
hearts." In Ferrar Fenton's translation, the word mind 
is rendered understanding, a rendering which takes reli- 



ISRAEL'S NEW COVENANT 291 

gion out of the realm of mere belief, and lifts it to the 
plane, not only of intelligent apprehension, but of scien- 
tihc application and proof. Jeremiah's prophecy clearly 
points to the time when the whole truth about God shall be 
revealed to the understanding, and the true spiritual rela- 
tion between God and man will not only be acknowlede-ed 
but practised. 

In different phraseology Jesus pointed to the same 
new covenant in the promised coming of the Comforter 
which he defined impersonally as the " Spirit of truth "' 
whose mission is to lead into all truth or to unfold to 
spiritual apprehension the real meaning, power and 
presence of the Christ. The fulfilment of Jeremiah's 
prophecy and of Jesus' promise are substantially identical 
a fact which establishes the spiritual Israel of the Old 
lestament and the Christianity of the New as essen- 
tially one. 

Jesus was " the mediator of a better covenant,'' founded 
upon an infinitely higher ideal of Deity than the Jehovis- 
tic concept with its ordinances and sacrifices; but the 
age was not then ready to receive it in its fulness, as 
witness the lapse of the Church into pre-exilic ideals 
and_ the attempt to pour the new teachings of Chris- 
tianity into pagan moulds. The anthropomorphism of 
primitive belief, which was ingrafted into the Hebrew 
conception of God, and later embodied in Christian creeds 
and dogmas, is not found in the teachings of the Master 
Even as late as the last century, if not entirely true of 
our own time, the theological schools of Christendom, 
almost without exception, were basing their teachino- 
upon^a view of Deity which did not touch the frinp-e 0I 
Jesus revelation of Him as the perfect Father. It may 
be said beyond peradventure, that the pagan description 
of God as the source of both good and evil, as consenting 
to the affliction of His own children with disease, mis- 
fortune and death and as consigning the wayward ones 
of earth to unending torture, pertains neither to the new 
covenant with Israel, nor to the Comforter which is to 
teach the truth to men. 



292 FOOTSTEPS OF ISRAEL 

Jesus did not imply that he had uttered the final word 
in declaring the truth about the Father. It was just 
before the crucifixion that he said to his disciples, " I 
have yet many things to say unto you, but ye can- 
not bear them now. . . . These things have I spoken 
unto you in proverbs: but the time cometh, when I 
shall no more speak unto you in proverbs, but I shall 
show you plainly of the Father." In these and other 
sayings Jesus left the way open for a fuller revela- 
tion of the truth than the world was then ready to re- 
ceive. Many centuries have passed since the Master's 
words were spoken, and it is not too soon to think of 
their fulfilment if we are to expect the restoration of 
spiritual power to the Christian Church, and the return 
of the woman from the wilderness. The expectations of 
men are not turning prematurely towards the coming 
of that perfect revelation of truth which is to bring 
them freedom from error, nor is it too soon to look 
about us for some sign of the promised bruising of the 
serpent's head. 

Six thousand years from " the woman " in the meta- 
phorical story of Eden, to "the woman" pictured in 
the symbolism of the Apocalypse, would seem a far 
cry, but the distance is one of spiritual development 
rather than of time. In reality they are identical. Her 
great destiny may be traced in prophetic outline in 
every step of spiritual progress, both in the Scriptural 
records and in subsequent history, and in the fulness 
of time, however distant that consummation may now 
appear, her seed, the recognition of spiritual truth, will 
fill the earth. 

While it is evident that "the woman" is not in any 
literal sense a person, but is named as a type of spiritu- 
ality, she has not been without a personal representative 
in the world's great epochs. She has ever stood for that 
higher quality of thought through which the spiritual 
facts of being have found recognition. It was woman 
who ushered the human conception or incarnation of 
the Christ into the world in the infant Jesus, and we 



ISRAEL'S NEW COVENANT 293 

must look to woman to usher in, or to give expression 
to, that fuller statement of the truth about God to which 
the Scriptures consistently point, and of which they are 
themselves a prophecy. 

The year 1866 was a memorable date among students 
of the prophetic Scriptures, because it was reckoned as 
ending the " time, times, and half a time " of the 
woman's sojourn in the wilderness (Rev. 12 : 14). Also, 
according to one computator, it was believed to date 
the beginning of the Lord's return to earth, as the resto- 
ration of living faith in Christ is sometimes termed. In 
that year, in a small town in New England, a woman, 
believed to be on her death-bed according to the verdict 
of her physician, was wrestling with the scepticism of 
an age that denied healing virtue to Christianity. It had 
long been taught that Christ was not to be regarded, in 
any practical way, as the "Great Physician" of men, 
so that it could be said of the Church also, but w^ith 
less excuse, that " He came unto his own, and his ow^n 
received him not." 

But the woman did not yield to this materialistic un- 
belief. Physical means being of no avail she turned to 
God, and while reading of the healing by Jesus of the 
palsied man, the eternal presence and power of the same 
Truth which brought him deliverance dawned upon her 
consciousness. She was immediately made whole. In 
that moment of illumination and discovery she saw the 
healing Christ. She had verified the Scriptural state- 
ment, '' unto them that look for him shall he appear the 
second time without sin unto salvation." 

To this spiritual discovery Mrs. Eddy gave the name, 
" Christian Science," a name which naturally implies an 
intelligent and demonstrable knowledge of the Messianic 
Truth, and w^hich points to the consummation of the 
New Covenant with Israel. A few years later, finding 
her message unwelcome to the religious teaching of the 
time, she organized a church, or denominational move- 
ment to provide the means for making this message and 
its practical benefits more widely known, and the increase 



294 FOOTSTEPS OF ISRAEL 

of this movement throughout the world has been a 
modern wonder. But, while Mrs. Eddy found this 
course expedient, not only for the promulgation but for 
the protection of her teaching, and although its expedi- 
ency may be apparent for an indefinite time, none knew 
better than she that a practical understanding of the 
divine Word is undenominational, and that Truth, be- 
cause of its universal divine nature, is necessarily in- 
dependent of human organizations. Inasmuch as the 
Christ is indivisible, there must come a time in Christian 
history when denominational lines will be obliterated, 
and " there shall be one fold, and one shepherd." 

But why was this message of Christian healing ac- 
companied by its proof, unwelcome to the religious 
thought of her time ? Evidently for the same reason that 
it was unwelcome to the religious thought of the Jews 
in the first century. Jesus' teachings were a rebuke to 
the dead formalism of the Judaic religion, and the carnal 
mind crucified him to silence his spiritual appeal. The 
call of Christian Science for a return to the works of 
the Master was a rebuke to the barrenness of doctrinal 
Christianity, while its uncompromisingly spiritual atti- 
tude threatened the peace of the materialist. It had been 
easier to drift with the current of materiality than to 
stem the stream, although the great Teacher had solemnly 
declared that unless a man denied himself — the man 
of dust — and bore his cross after him, he could not 
be his disciple; in other words, he could not be a true 
Christian. It was this demand for denial, which Chris- 
tian Science insisted upon so relentlessly, that once more 
brought forth the cry which had resounded in the judg- 
ment-hall of Pilate; for when has materialism felt at 
peace in the presence of the Christ? 

Mrs. Eddy stood before the world as the lone pioneer 
of a monotheism so absolute that few were ready to 
accept it, yet withal so comprehensive that only evil and 
its concomitants were excluded from it. In this new 
exposition of Christian truth, the First Commandment 
was taken at its full value, and God was, therefore, ac- 



ISRAELIS NEW COVENANT 295 

knowledged to be infinite in the literal meaning of that 
word. In her unreserved protest against materialism and 
its idolatries, or the endowment of matter with the prero- 
gatives which belong to Deity alone, Mrs. Eddy was 
establishing an order of Protestantism such as the world 
had not yet known. In general terms it simply meant 
the refusal to admit that life, intelligence, substance, or 
reality are to be found in God's unlikeness, or in that 
which does not express His glory, immortality, and 
goodness. 

While all this was plainly in accord with the best 
views which the Scriptures give of Deity, and with the 
evident intent and purpose of Christianity, it struck too 
hard at the material idolatry of both Christians and un- 
believers to be readily acclaimed. It has never been the 
nature of the carnal mind to submit tamely to rebuke, 
or to caress the hand threatening to destroy it; and so 
we find the critics of this new message taking refuge in 
the subterfuge that, because Christian Science denies 
reality to evil, it is not Christian ; and because it teaches 
tlie allness of Mind, it is not scientific. This atheistic 
argument would condemn every effort for reform since 
the world began, inasmuch as human beings can reach 
a diviner consciousness only as they become more spirit- 
ually-minded, and good replaces evil in their thoughts. 

Mrs. Eddy very sanely based her teaching upon the 
highest and most absolute statements in the Scriptures 
which define Deity and devil, instead of following the 
beaten track of a rigid and unprogressive theology, with 
its insistent belief in a finite divinity. Recognizing as 
he did the perfection of the Father and the Son, Jesus 
could not define devil in any other light than as a falsity, 
as a lie or liar. His analysis was justified by what he 
knew and was daily proving of the truth about God, and 
it remains the one correct and scientific definition of that 
element in human thought which arrays itself against 
God's government. 

The difficulty in securing a friendly or even impartial 
examination of this subject is due, not only to the bias 



296 FOOTSTEPS OF ISRAEL 

of religious education, but to the fact that most people 
think of Christian Science as a sect, rather than as a 
Science, presenting Christ's teachings as the practical 
guide to right thinking and right living, by means of 
which sickness may be healed and sin eradicated from 
human consciousness. The New Covenant with Israel 
distinctly implied the understanding of God's laws, and 
that their observance would be inspired by love of good 
("written in the heart"), not by fear of punishment. 
The great Teacher summed up God's laws as supreme 
loyalty to God as One and All, and as love for one an- 
other. On these two divine statutes "hang all the law 
and the prophets." That these laws are Christian is 
beyond dispute ; and that they are capable of being prac- 
tised in accordance with the unerring rules which Jesus 
laid down must also be accepted; yet these divine laws 
and their demonstration comprehend, in their fulness, the 
whole of Christian Science. 

Mortals' deliverance from evil cannot be called an 
accident, nor can it be conceived of in any sense as a 
lawless process. (T'here is a power impelling and attend- 
ing the new birthlEhat does not spring from fear, or from 
an indolent acquiescence in another individual's sacrifice 
and resurrection : and that power is the law of good, 
whose operation in human consciousness, as it is under- 
stood and adhered to, is unvarying and certaim " It is 
God that worketh with you," said Paul; hence God is 
the Principle of human redemption, and its progressive 
accomplishment must be correctly designated as scientific ; 
that is, it is being wrought out on the basis of Divine 
truth and law. 

That there is a Science of Christianity, or Christian 
Science, should be unquestioned by all who understand the 
significance of these two words, and their wonderful 
message to humianity when united. If we believe there 
is a science dealing with material things, how much 
more should we believe in the relation of science to spir- 
itual things ;. for the former at their best are ephemeral, 
while the latter are eternal. But science in these opposite 



ISRAEL'S NEW COVENANT 297 

aspects is no more identical than the mortal sense of man 
is identical with the immortal. The Science of Chris- 
tianity stands alone, since it alone can interpret the truth 
of divine things and define its rules, by means of which 
men may reach the understanding of their relation to 
the Father, and of the Father's relation to His offspring, 
and may apply that understanding to the solution of all 
human problems. 

Thus it should be readily seen that Christian Science 
is not a sect, or a philosophy peculiar to a class, but the un- 
folding to human understanding of the law of divinity. In 
its simplest statement it is the practical overcoming of evil 
with good, but with nothing else. It is plain that in the 
knowledge and application of God's law there is no class 
or sectarian discrimination, for in the presence of His 
impartial demands all human beings stand upon the 
same footing of necessity, and must ultimately walk the 
same road in meeting them. However widely sects and 
denominations may differ in their religious views, when 
it comes to the question of actually ridding consciousness 
of evil, they have no possible alternative but to put into 
practice the truth of man's divine sonship, a truth which 
is not " hedged with forms," and is *' too large for creeds." 

Since Christianity rests upon the infinity of God, it 
is idle to deny its scientific nature and construction, for 
this infinitude must naturally include all law and order, 
and in consequence be the foundation or source of all 
cause and government. From that standpoint God 
would necessarily be divine Principle, as Mrs. Eddy 
very properly defines Him ; not as a cold or meaningless 
abstraction, but as the omnipresence of divine Love, ex- 
pressing intelligence and perfection throughout the uni- 
verse. It is obvious that it was this Christian Science, 
^or the Science of Christ's teachings, which lay back of 
^Jesus' remarkable works; but the Father was none the 
less the Father because the Son could thus prove His 
love and goodness with the unerring certainty of law. 

It is true that Christian Science differs from other 
systems of religion in its method, but not in its purpose. 



298 FOOTSTEPS OF ISRAEL 

and this difference arises from the different conclusion 
which it draws from the Scriptural promise of God's 
infinitude. Christian Science very naturally and logi- 
cally concludes that, if God is All-in-all, there can be 
nothing real unlike Him, and it attacks the evil in human 
consciousness upon that basis. But before questioning 
this position, it should be considered that every church 
which acknowledges the omnipotence, omniscience, and 
omnipresence of God must take the same position, or 
be untrue to its affirmations. It is not wise to maintain 
an attitude of vacillation, or to evade the responsibility 
of decision by quibbling over terms and definitions, since 
every system of religion, irrespective of creed and 
dogma, must stand or fall on this fundamental point. 

The First Commandment requires an unequivocal 
adherence to the infinity of God, else it is without force 
or value; and it is the truth declared in this command 
that Israel was to teach and to prove to the Gentiles. 
Is not the time to come when all men shall be taught 
" plainly of the Father " ? And when that time comes, 
shall it not be taught equally as plainly, without sophistry 
or reservation, that He creates or makes manifest all 
that is true, and that there is, consequently, nothing 
true unlike Him ? Until it is thus seen that divinity em- 
braces the whole of being, the import and purpose of 
true religion is not fully perceived, and the experience 
of seeing God " face to face " remains to be realized. 

The uniform design of all the Christian religions is 
to overcome evil, and if Christianity is to be successful 
there must come a time when evil has been entirely over- 
come, and there is no longer a witness to its existence. 
When that point is reached will God be more than He 
now is? Will He exercise greater power, or fill a 
larger space? Can it be reasonably supposed that the 
overcoming of evil by mankind is adding aught to the 
sum of God's being, increasing His omnipotence, or 
making His presence more universal ? Is it not apparent 
that whatever change is being effected in this process is 
in the human consciousness only, that is, human beings 



ISRAEL'S NEW COVENANT 299 

are coming to see things differently. Men naturally see 
more of good as evil is successfully resisted, until the 
time shall come when good is seen to be supreme and 
fills all their thoughts : but God will then be the same as 
He was yesterday, and as He is today. 

Let it be supposed, on the contrary, that Christianity 
fails, and that evil succeeds in blotting good out of con- 
sciousness; what would there be left? Would men and 
w^omen continue to exist, and to express activity, sus- 
tained by evil alone? Would there be happiness and 
love and immortality without God? Would the sun still 
shine, and flowers bloom, and trees bring forth fruit? 
Would there be consciousness anywhere? If, then, God 
is essential to the life and reality of things, it necessarily 
follows that nothing apart from Him can actually exist, 
nor can anything be literally present anywhere which 
does not derive its being from Him. These things being 
true, as they unquestionably are, in what sense can Chris- 
tian Science be at fault in holding fast to God as the 
sole reality? If we accept the apostle's statement that 
" all things were made by Him," it is certainly anomalous 
to believe in a creation of which God is not the author, 
or that there can be real things, real power and intelli- 
gence, which have no relation to divinity at all. 

It cannot be said that Christian Science came without 
reason or necessity, for, if the consciousness of Christen- 
dom was to be saved from spiritual inanity and starva- 
tion, it w^as imperative that the church awaken to Christ's 
demands, and bring forth the fruits of her discipleship. 
The crying need of the world was for a more practical 
interpretation of Christianity than had been presented 
during the last fifteen centuries, for the simple reason 
that none of the various branches of the Christian reli- 
gion had succeeded in repeating the works of its Founder, 
as he had enjoined, nor had even made any consistent 
or sustained effort in that direction. Which school of 
doctrinal theology points to the teachings O'f Christ 
Jesus as containing the remedy for all human ills, or 
as providing the solution of the many problems now 



300 FOOTSTEPS OF ISRAEL 

facing mankind? Can it be said that Christianity, as 
Jesus practised it, has been imparting its blessings and 
its redemption to men here on the earth, in the way that 
he plainly intimated? 

It has been said that the recent world war did not 
result from the failure of Christianity, but from the 
failure to practise it. At what door must we lay this 
failure? Not the lack of preaching, or of churches, or 
of Bibles, or of creeds. Then what has been lacking in 
all this religious teaching and preaching, that there has 
been so little serious effort to make Christianity the 
vital power in human affairs which it was designed to 
be? What has been given to the world in the name of 
Christ, that the Christian world is still effusively crying, 
"Lord, Lord," but are not doing the things which he 
said? 

The coming of the Comforter is, very obviously, not 
the advent of a person, but would seem to refer to that 
unveiling to human understanding of the spiritual truth 
of being, which opens the door of freedom from ma- 
terialism and its evils. Standing before a world of 
hostile critics, making her lone but immensely significant 
protest against the reality of matter, Mrs. Eddy easily 
became the leader of the human crusade against ma- 
terialism, and precipitated the final stages of the con- 
flict between the flesh and Spirit. It is evident that no 
permanent help or comfort can come to mortals from 
any material source. The captivity of Israel, the captiv- 
ity of the higher thought of humanity to the seductive- 
ness of physical sense, can end only through regaining 
the spiritual idea of God and man. Hence the momen- 
tous act of " the woman " in the present age, in challeng- 
ing the long-standing claims of matter and evil on the 
basis of the allness of Mind and the sovereignty of God. 

The movement which arose in the last century under 
the name of Christian Science is a movement towards 
primitive Christianity, and the restoration of its original 
standard and requirements. It has been predicted by 
some of its critics that in the course of the twentieth 



ISRAEL'S NEW COVENANT 301 

century all the Protestant churches will adopt and prac- 
tise Christian Science; and no fair-minded person, 
thoughtfully reading the writings of the Founder of 
this movement, and observing their influence upon those 
who consistently follow her teachings, could deplore the 
possible fulfilment of that prediction. The religion which 
is most spiritual, and which most closely approximates 
the example of Jesus, must be nearest the ideal of Chris- 
tianity, and will survive the opposition of its foes and 
the mistakes of its friends. 

Although Mrs. Eddy, like every true reformer, did 
not find her views at first welcomed by the world, she 
lived to see much of that attitude reversed, and her 
cause rapidly spreading throughout the \Torld. The new 
light had dawned, and the leaven of a woman's higher 
perception of Truth was safely laid away in human con- 
sciousness, in the place God had prepared for it, until 
the whole should be leavened. At the passing of this 
notable woman, after devoting more than half a century 
to the work to which she had been called, she was honored 
almost universally by the very press which, in earlier 
years had attempted to discredit her; and some of the 
churches which had refused to acknowledge any truth 
in her teachings, are now beginning to recognize the 
value and far-reaching influence of her work. 

In a sermon delivered in 1893, Rev. Joseph Wild, D. D., 
author of The Lost Ten Tribes, said: "I believe there 
will come a female who will rule and lead, and her son 
will be the chief ruler and leader among the nations of 
the earth, and he will be accepted by God, and he will 
be accepted by the nations, and she will be accepted as 
his adviser and director, and they will be of the family 
of David for a special mission unto the world." Just 
what this well-known expositor of the prophetic Scrip- 
tures had in mind is not disclosed, but the quotation is 
given as evidence that the woman's place and mission in 
the final stages of human redemption were beginning to 
be recognized. 

Commenting upon the occasion of Mrs. Eddy's cen- 



302 FOOTSTEPS OF ISRAEL 

tenary, a prominent secular newspaper said : " That Mrs. 
Eddy was an American, born of a long line of Puritan 
ancestors, and whose genealogy is that of the Anglo- 
Saxon founders of this country, is, in the minds of many 
thoughtful people, but another concrete evidence of the 
vast spiritual destiny of America. To those not unmind- 
ful that genealogy has a place in the affairs of the world, 
it will be of interest to note that Mary Baker Eddy's 
lineage goes back to those Scotch forbears who were 
mightily associated with the affairs of their times, for a 
direct ancestor was a daughter of a king of Scotland, 
and thus her line is connected with the present royal 
house of Great Britain, which, as has recently been shown 
by many authorities, goes straight back in history through 
Scotland and Ireland to David, King of Israel." 

Mrs. Eddy was a woman of wide sympathies, and 
was broadly interested in the great questions of the day, 
among which was what is known as the Anglo-Israel 
cause, whose position and evidence not only elicited her 
interest but won her conviction. In some of the earlier 
volumes of the Christian Science Sentinel, one of the 
periodicals of the Christian Science movement, and which 
for several years was under her personal supervision, are 
to be found a number of quotations from the writings 
of Lieutenant C. A. L. Totten, one-time Professor of 
Military Science at Yale University, and a recognized 
authority upon the subject of Anglo-Israel. 

In a letter to Rev. W. M. H. Milner, M.A., F.R.G.S., 
in 1902, as recently quoted in the press, she said in part, 
" Your work. The Royal House of Britain an Enduring 
Dynasty, is indeed masterful : one of the most remarkable 
Biblical researches in that direction ever accomplished. 
Its data and the logic of its events sustain its authenticity, 
and its grandeur sparkles in the words, * King Jesus.' " 
From a poem entitled, " The United States to Great 
Britain," contributed by Mrs. Eddy to the Boston Herald 
during the Spanish-American War of 1908, the follow- 
ing significant verses are taken: 



ISRAEL'S NEW COVENANT 303 

"List, brother! angels whisper 
To Judah's sceptred race, — - 
* Thou of the self -same spirit, 
Allied by nations' grace, 

" * Wouldst cheer the hosts of Heaven ; 
For Anglo-Israel, lo ! 
Is marching under orders ; 
His hand averts the blow.' 

" Brave Britain, blest America ! 
Unite your battle plan ; 
Victorious, all who live it, — 
The love for God and man." 

Perhaps the particular feature of Christian Science 
which has attracted the widest public notice is the im- 
portance which it attaches to the healing function of Chris- 
tianity, not only in the day of its establishment by Jesus, 
but so long as the need of healing shall endure. Although 
its insistence upon this function was at first resented by 
most of the so-called orthodox churches, there is now 
an organized movement in a number of these same 
churches to reinstate healing as an element of the Chris- 
tian ministry. 

It is a matter of simple record, as before pointed out 
in these pages, that the healing of disease by spiritual 
means was not uncommon in Israel prior to the captivity, 
and that this practice was carried into the New Testament 
dispensation in abundant measure. In the time of Elisha 
it was sufficiently prominent to attract the attention of 
outside nations ; and there must be other Naamans among 
the Gentiles of today who will have cause to say, " Now 
I know there is no God in all the earth, but in Israel." 
The Scriptural description of the restoration of Israel 
makes it absolutely certain that none of her former func- 
tions and privileges will be omitted. 

The covenant, in which God was committed to the 
maintenance of the health of His people so long as they 
obeyed His commandments, has not lost its importance, 
or its place in human welfare. The repetition of this 
covenant in various forms, and the absence in the Scrip- 
tures of any intimation that human agencies might some- 



304 FOOTSTEPS OF ISRAEL 

time be substituted for God, proclaim the renewal of His 
relation to Israel as One " who healeth all thy diseases, 
who redeemeth thy life from destruction." The attempt 
in the present day to evade the terms* of this covenant, 
or to treat it as outgrown, means either that human inven- 
tions are believed to be more potent than the God of 
Israel, or that health is believed to be attainable inde- 
pendently of Him, that is, without regard to the law of 
righteousnesss. It is useless to preach the identity of 
the Anglo-Saxons with God's covenant people, and at 
the same time ignore or deny the very covenants which 
Israel represents and by which she must continue to be 
bound. 

In Micah 5:2, 3, we read, " But thou, Bethlehem 
Ephratah, though thou be little among the thousands of 
Judah, yet out of thee shall he come forth unto me that 
is to be ruler in Israel ; whose goings forth have been from 
of old, from everlasting. Therefore will he give them 
up, until the time that she which travaileth hath brought 
forth ; then the remnant of his brethren shall return unto 
the children of Israel." Between these two verses, Dr. 
Scofield places the period between the first and second 
advents of the Christ. *^The remnant of his (Jesus') 
brethren " are the Jews, and these have not yet returned 
to the children of Israel, so that the latter part of this 
prophecy plainly relates to the time of the restoration, 
and involves the coming through a woman of that which 
is to reunite the houses of Israel and Judah; and that is 
the impersonal appearing of the Messiah, the recognition 
in this age of the healing and redemptive Truth which 
was humanly manifested in Christ Jesus, or the coming 
of the divine Comforter. It is a well-known fact, of 
particular interest in this connection, that many Jews 
have accepted the teachings of Christian Science, and 
now call themselves Christians. 

The ideal of a demonstrable Christianity to which 
Mrs. Eddy gave the name '' Christian Science " may well 
be defined as Israel's new covenant of understanding. 
Those who object to receiving anything progressive in 



ISRAEL'S NEW COVENANT 305 

religion from a woman should call to mind that, accord- 
ing to the first Scriptural prophecy, mankind's final de- 
liverance from the serpent was to be effected through 
woman. The dawn of the Christian era came through 
woman, and her child opened the door into the kingdom 
of heaven, thus becoming the wayshower for humanity, 
and the central figure in its human history. And in this 
age also, as implied in the prophecy of Micah, the restor- 
ing truth, which is to bring back Israel and Christendom 
from the captivity of materialism, is to be born of woman, 
or to come to light through her. Shall we not, then, wel- 
come this Heavenly guest, and humbly verify the Scrip- 
ture, " As many as received him, to them gave he power 
to become the sons of God." 

The writer gratefully acknowledges his indebtedness 
to Mrs. Eddy's writings for their illumination of the 
Scriptures, without which he feels he would not have 
discerned the inner meaning, purpose, and destiny of 
Israel, not only in relation to Biblical times, but to modern 
history and the future of the race. In devoting one 
chapter to the subject of Christian Science because of 
its intimate relation, as the author views it, to the restor- 
ing of lost Israel, he has refrained from any attempted 
explanation of its teachings, his purpose being to show 
the logic of its appearance, and its essential place in the 
plan of human redemption. 



CHAPTER XXVIII 
Armageddon^ and After 

And He will destroy in this mountain the face of the 
covering cast over all people, and the vail that is 
spread over all nations. — Isa. 25 : 7. 

For thus saith the Lord of hosts ; Yet once, it is a lit- 
tle while, and I will shake the heavens, and the earth, 
and the sea, and the dry land. — Hag. 2 : 6. 

And this word. Yet once more, signifieth the removing 
of those things that are shaken, as of things that are 
made, that those things which cannot be shaken may re- 
main. — Heb. 12 : 27. 

The creature itself also shall be delivered from the 
bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the 
children of God. — Rom. 8:21. 

THE seeds of all human conflict have their root in the 
conviction that man is a material being, a crea- 
ture of the dust, for from that belief proceed all 
the passions and appetites which link mortals with the 
beast. Covetousness, envy, hatred, lust, ambition, fear, 
have their source and support in the conception that 
power, wealth, success, pleasure, and all earthly glory, 
are to be attained and enjoyed materially; and the natural 
offspring of that conception, the supposition that one 
person, or one family, or one nation can be despoiled 
or oppressed to the advantage of another, has kept the 
race in perpetual strife. The material sense of existence 
makes no provision for human brotherhood, has never 
yet given birth to the faintest divine impulse, for self- 
interest is the alpha and omega of its creed. 

It should be seen, therefore, that the great struggle 
which looms up before the world today, and which must 
ere long be faced and fought out, is not between nations, 
or between capital and labor, or between any of the 
conflicting questions engaging human attention, but it 
will be the great struggle of humanity for spiritual free- 
dom. It will be the final chapter in that long conflict 



ARMAGEDDON, AND AFTER 307 

between the awakening spiritual thought of humanity 
and the carnal mind, and the peace of the world will be 
in proportion to the triumph of righteousness. Although 
every movement towards the lessening of warfare be- 
tween nations is welcome, permanent peace will not 
be realized until human consciousness is spiritually 
transformed. 

It has been quite freely admitted that the recent great 
war was not so much a war between races as between 
ideals. This fiery experience was, in reality, a call for 
national consecration to the charge which God has laid 
upon this race. Israel finds herself returning from her 
exile, not to a world at peace, but to a war of conquest; 
not the conquest of peoples, but of the errors which ever 
betray humanity into captivity. It is nothing less than the 
conquest of the carnal mind, the pantheon of the human 
race, to which Israel as Britain-America is committed ; for 
the idolatry of ancient and modern times is but the exalta- 
tion of matter and material concepts in place of the one 
infinite Spirit and His manifestations. Israel, however, 
need not go back twenty-five centuries in order to re- 
nounce the gods of the Gentiles, for their altars are to 
be found today in every nook and corner of her land. 
They appear under different names, but their natures 
are the same, and as surely alienate the affections from 
the one good, which Jesus said v/as God. These are 
precisely the same delusions against which Israel was 
warned in the First Commandment, and which have ever 
beguiled humanity into the belief of an evil consciousness. 

Although appearing today under a different national 
name, with different environments, customs, and condi- 
tions, Israel is still, in the quality of her thoughts and in 
her relation to God's covenants, the Israel of a long past 
yesterday. She finds the same weaknesses to be over- 
come, the same demands attaching to her position, and 
the same destiny awaiting her. Moreover, the Philistines, 
Assyrians, and others of her ancient enemies, are also 
existing today under different names, but their types and 
characteristics are the same, and they bear the same 



3o8 FOOTSTEPS OF ISRAEL 

relation to their ancient foe, and feel much the same 
unthinking antipathy. But the world is beginning to dis- 
cover the folly of fighting out its disagreements or its 
antipathies on bloody battlefields, since these have never 
healed the disagreements or made friends out of ene- 
mies. Israel will not commemorate her restoration by 
reviving or perpetuating old feuds. Christ Jesus taught 
a more successful way of conquering an enemy than by 
war; and that new day is at hand when better ideals 
instead of bigger guns will figure largest in a nation's 
armament, and will exercise infinitely more power than 
gunpowder or poison gas. 

The peace of the world is not contingent upon a 
League of Nations, or upon international conferences, 
or upon reduction of material armaments, although these 
are footsteps in the right direction, but upon the percep- 
tion and acceptance by the nations of the Christian ideal. 
The nations must learn to disarm mentally as well as 
materially. They must be willing to scrap their hatreds 
and their jealousies and their selfishness along with their 
battleships and guns; and to this end they will need to 
learn what the new Israel, or the Israel of the new day, 
should be able to teach them ; and that is the truth about 
God, or demonstrable Christianity. It is for this purpose 
that Israel is returning from her captivity, and it is this 
near approach of a better recognition of God and of His 
demands which is disturbing the '' powers of darkness." 
The false confidence of Gentile ascendancy is broken. 
What the apostle called " the powers of this world " are 
now fighting a defensive campaign, but which for that rea- 
son is all the fiercer. The carnal mind's dream of world 
dominion is fast fading, and in its place is looming up 
the outer darkness into which its own evil nature is forc- 
ing it, and the bottomless pit of its final self-extinction. 

The magnitude and world-wide nature of the recent 
war naturally attracted the attention of Bible readers 
to the subject of Armageddon, the great final gather- 
ing of the nations against Israel described in Ezekiel 
xxxviii and xxxix, and in Revelation xix. This gen- 



ARMAGEDDON, AND AFTER 309 

era! upheaval without doubt marked the beginning 
of the final phases of that conflict between the flesh 
and Spirit which has been going on in human conscious- 
ness ever since the necessity of overcoming the serpent 
of materiality was first recognized. At this date, after 
four years of military peace, the nations find themselves 
still being tossed about in the economic after-swell of 
that storm, tired of war but too distrustful of each other 
to beat their swords into plowshares. Governmental des- 
potism and national warfare have had their inevitable 
counterparts in industrial or economic despotism, injus- 
tice, and class enmity, which are the outcome of the same 
brute selfishness, and are equally successful in sowing 
the seeds of disaster. The danger of the human ex- 
treme, in one foiTn or another^* stalks menacingly across 
the horizon of civilization. No one can foresee clearly 
the nature of the ordeal through which humanity may 
have to pass in the refining and purifying process spoken 
of in the Scriptures. That this will come in some form 
to individuals and- nations is plainly stamped in the 
impartial .^ffiand for perfection, for whatever is unlike 
God cannot " abide the day of His coming," or " stand 
w^hen He appeareth." The truth of man's divine origin 
is as a " consuming fire," which sooner or later will " try 
every man's work of what sort it is." 

The Hebrew prophets were not alarmists, but they 
painted one side of their picture of latter-day develop- 
ments with a strikingly forbidding aspect, and their 
example was followed by the prophets of the New Tes- 
tament, including our Lord himself; but that was only 
the side of the picture which appears to the sinning 
human sense. The " winds of God " seem as storm and 
tempest to the carnal mind, but they " thoroughly purge 
His floor," and although they blow away the chaff, the 
wheat is gathered unharmed " into His garner." Jesus 
did not point to the dark side of the picture as a cause 
for anxiety, but quite the reverse. "When these begin 
to come to pass," he said, " then look up, and lift up your 
heads; for your redemption draweth nigh." 



3IO FOOTSTEPS OF ISRAEL 

The closing" act of Armageddon, in its relation to na- 
tions in conflict, apparently is yet to come. Metaphysi- 
cally considered, it is the struggle of the human mind 
to be free from its materiality, and this conflict 
will necessarily have to go on and on until the goal is 
gained and the New Jerusalem appears. But the interim 
may be a long one, for neither individuals nor nations 
are transformed from evil to good overnight. When 
the English-speaking peoples fully awaken to the fact 
that they are God's instruments to save the nations, and 
to make His name known to all people, they will consti- 
tute in themselves a League of Nations which will 
guarantee the righteous adjustment of all international 
difliculties or disagreements. 

We have undoubtedly come to the most important 
stage of the human journey, when old things are pre- 
paring to pass away, and history and prophecy mingle 
their testimony of the approach of the new day. The 
six days in which human thought has wrestled with 
a material view of life and creation are drawing to a 
close, and beyond the smoke of Armageddon the spiritual 
apprehension of all things, which is making its appeal 
heard in every department of right human activity, will 
become the paramount factor in human experience, and 
the new idea of heaven and earth, " wherein dwelleth 
righteousness," will appear to mortals. If this were not 
to be the case, if the mistakes of past ages were not to 
be recognized and treated as mistakes, they would per- 
petuate their delusions, and human consciousness would 
still remain in the darkness of its errors. Whether they 
think of it or not, the feet of the nations have entered 
the path which is leading them to that day which " shall 
burn as an oven," but a day also in which " the Sun of 
righteousness " shall " arise with healing in his wings." 
Let Israel gird herself for the days lying just ahead of 
her, not with material armaments and human diplomacy, 
but by casting out of her borders the things that defile 
and pollute her people. 

Armageddon is something more than a battle between 



ARMAGEDDON, AND AFTER 311 

humans beings. It represents the opposition of the carnal 
mind to the rising tide of spirituality in Israel. The 
serpent is used in the Scripture as a symbol of material 
sense, for by no stretch of imagination can it be 
thought of as a symbol of spiritual sense; while 
the woman, all the way through, has ever stood for 
the supremacy of spiritual law. The enmity between the 
woman and the serpent has ever been characterized in 
this way. "The world of time and sense" has offered 
its sacrifices upon the altars of materialism, and even 
Christendom herself has passed her sons and daughters 
through the fire of those sacrifices, as if the things which 
are earthy had the precedence over the things which are 
heavenly, and as if material codes were decrees of the Al- 
mighty which it were impious to challenge or disobey. 
And matter has surely ruled mankind with a tyrannical 
hand, giving in return for their allegiance only a fitful 
and fleeting sense of pleasure, with an almost continuous 
consciousness of fear, and an experience of disease, mis- 
fortune, suffering, infirmity, and certainty of death, such 
as only the mentality of demons could be conceived of as 
devising and administering. Held under the spell of 
its deceitful sense, mortals have exalted this "accursed 
thing " to the very seat of divine power, and have thus 
made it "the abomination of desolation" for all the 
ages. 

The stirring of spiritual awakening in the woman 
sent out the first protest against this serpentine delusion, 
and Israel was the logical offspring of her spiritual 
seed; but Israel, with all her wonderful experiences 
of God-bestowed dominion, afterwards lost sight of 
her inheritance in a night of materialism. The Chris- 
tian Church, with an even richer history of the proofs 
of divine power over so-called material law, went into 
captivity for the same thing as her predecessor, and in 
so doing spread a covering of spiritual darkness over 
her people. And now, in this third stage of the human 
struggle for salvation and freedom, the Spirit of Gpd is 
again brooding over the darkness of the world's error, and 



312 FOOTSTEPS OF ISRAEL 

the Science of Christianity, or Christian Science, appears, 
and challenges the Goliath of matter. 

This sudden appearance of woman, striking boldly at' 
the very head of the serpent, aroused its latent antagon- 
ism until even many professing Christians entered the 
lists as unwitting champions of materialism. The deci- 
sive and final conflict towards which the ages have been 
moving has been joined, and its various phases will be 
fought out until the emancipation of mankind from the 
deception that life is material and mortal, has been ac- 
complished./ Jesus alluded to the tremendous disturbances 
which this mental conflict would produce on the surface 
of human consciousness. Ezekiel and Daniel described 
their visions of the same events in graphic and pictur- 
esque figures, but they left us in no uncertainty as to 
the spiritual outcome. In the Apocalypse St. John con- 
firmed all these descriptions, so that we need not hesitate 
in looking for the literal and complete dethronement of 
the false gods of this world. The testimony of prophets 
and apostles point to the period upon which we are now 
entering, not because it is to continue the material con- 
ceptions of past ages, but, on the contrary, because it will 
bear witness to the absolute supremacy of Spirit. 

When Mrs. Eddy declared for the infinitude of 
Mind, and the consequent unreality of matter as 
being substantial, living, or intelligent, there was a 
storm of protests from both thinkers and non-thinkers; 
but since that time there has been, especially of late 
years, a steady trend on the part of physicists towards 
her position; and it is plainly only a question of time 
when they will stand on the same platform with Chris- 
tian Science and acknowledge, with all reverence, not, as 
some are doing, that matter is but another name for 
force, but that Mind is infinite and divine. When that 
time comes the world will not have gone backward but 
forward, and science will have glorified its name far 
beyond its present doubtful accomplishments in the line 
of physical experimentation. 

If it was ever true that life and intelligence have their 



ARMAGEDDON, AND AFTER 313 

source in matter, it is true still, and must so con- 
tinue; but what, then, of the ''mind which was in Christ 
Jesus," which Christians are enjoined to have? If this 
Christ-mind is not materially derived, then all material- 
mindedness stands condemned as false to God, and as 
unrelated to the man whom He created. Matter cannot 
rationally be conceived of as godlike, either in itself or 
in its effects, since it is materialism which holds the race 
in bondage to passions and appetites, and which, instead 
of dispensing life, consigns mortals to disease and death. 
How can mankind believe it possible to achieve the 
freedom of the sons of God while yielding to its de- 
basing lusts and limitations? They cannot. What is 
called matter stands revealed in human experience aS 
the merciless tyrant of the race, whose service has not 
enriched its devotees with even a molecule of tender- 
ness and love. Shall we, then, argue in its behalf, defend 
its usurped rights, and thereby prolong human fear 
and suffering? or shall we as true Israelites and true 
Christians stand for man's right to be governed by Mind 
alone ? 

It should be apparent, therefore, if Armageddon is 
to mark the final overthrow of Gentile power, that it 
must have a broader meaning than a battleground be- 
tween nations, for in the latter case the outcome would 
simply leave one nation or combination of nations as the 
victor. It must also mean more than a conflict between 
material forces, for that would simply result in establish- 
ing one expression of physical force as stronger than 
another. It will not be a conflict between different forms 
of error, for that would simply mean the triumph of the 
greatest error, and leave mankind worse than before. 
Neither will it be a conflict betw^een different expressions 
of truth, for Truth is one and indivisible and there can 
be no conflict between its manifestations. Armageddon, 
so far as it relates to the salvation, that is to say the 
regeneration of mankind, will be, and is, the decisive 
struggle in human consciousness between what the apostle 
calls the carnal mind, and the Mind which w^as in Christ 



3H 



FOOTSTEPS OF ISRAEL 



Jesus ; or between the divine or spiritual sense of things, 
and the temporal, sinning sense of mortals. 

Whatever hostile lining up of the nations may yet 
occur, and however sanguinary such a struggle may 
prove to be, it can only prefigure the mental conflict be- 
tween the ideals of Israel and the ideals of paganism, that 
is, between the spirituality typified by the woman and 
the sensuality typified by the serpent. Is Christendom 
ready to fight on the side of spirituality? or is it still 
in the valley of decision, temporizing over the fallacies 
of materialism, and unheeding the spiritual Christ knock- 
ing at the door? 

The restoration of Israel means the bringing back 
of the spiritual sense of being, the lost Israel which 
Jesus came to save, and which Christian Science isi 
here to restore; it cannot by any form of human soph- 
istry be construed as meaning the opposite. Materi- 
alism is the foundation and bulwark of Gentiledom, 
whereas the God of Israel is infinite, divine Spirit, and she 
acknowledges none beside Him. If this position were 
reversed, then the Gentiles, not the Israelites, would 
have been known as the people of God. Israel was 
not taken captive by a spiritually-minded people, but 
by idolaters whose gods were the apotheosis of sensual 
human concepts. Did the " times of the Gentiles " refer 
to the dominion of matter, or to the reign of Spirit? Does 
the ending of these times mean that matter is to be en- 
throned or dethroned as the basis of human life, activity, 
happiness, and intelligence? Will Israel take part in 
Armageddon as the avowed champion of materiality, or 
as the exponent of spirituality? The right answers to 
these and other related questions cannot be left out of a 
consistent discussion of this subject, nor can any useful 
end be served in evading or ignoring them. 

It is undeniable that the course of Israel was set 
towards the attainment of a spiritual and godlike sense 
or consciousness. This being so, her restoration would 
imply a necessary increase of spirituality from the time of 
her captivity, and a corresponding decrease of materiality ; 



ARMAGEDDON, AND AFTER 315 

otherwise the restoration would be of little consequence 
to herself or to the world. The course of Israel can lie 
along no other road than the overcoming of the fleshly 
nature, else humanity would be quite as well conditioned 
under Gentile dominion. The achievement of her aims 
cannot stop short of that universal knowing of the Lord 
w^hich is a feature of her new covenant, and when God 
is universally known in His true nature, all that is unlike 
Him will be universally unknown. 

These are not idle statements; they indicate the goal 
towards which the practice of Christianity must neces- 
sarily take us, and they define the real battle-issues of 
Armageddon, in which the Christian Church must fight 
out its freedom from pagan and worldly influences, and 
stand uncompromisingly for the supremacy of Spirit 
and spiritual law. The decisive conflict with materialism 
has been postponed until this age because Christendom 
joined hands with the world instead of overcoming it; 
and Christians are still being taught to accept the au- 
thority of so-called material laws as final. When mor- 
tals come under the doom of disease or disability, they 
are still taught that there is no power in Christianity to 
prevent the sentence from being carried out. 

This attitude, in a period of supposedly Christian en- 
lightenment and progress, does not indicate that Israel 
is awake, but that she is still asleep to her inheritance 
and her privileges. Such unprotesting submission to 
materialism would not resurrect Israel in a million years, 
but could only serv^e to bury her that much deeper in the 
dust. The assumption, that material authority or law 
transcends the spiritual, finds no support in the records 
of Israel, in the teachings of the prophets, or in the 
testimony of Jesus and his apostles; it is a fungus growth 
which the Church has acquired from her fellowship with 
the world, and which will have to be burned out of her 
in "the day of His coming." The Injunction to "come 
out from the world and be separate " has not beci re- 
versed; but neither has it been obeyed. The apostle, 
very obviously, is not alluding to the spiritual world, and 



3l6 FOOTSTEPS OF ISRAEL 

must mean that consciousness of materiality in which 
the human sense is engulfed, and from which it is the 
mission of Christianity to bring deliverance. 

Matter is the medium of the carnal mind, not of the 
Mind which was in Christ Jesus, and has never been a 
factor but a hindrance in the moral uplifting of men. It 
has never contributed to the emancipation of mankind 
from the lusts of the flesh, therefore it is not the door 
by which men may enter into the kingdom of heaven. 

The work of dethroning this tyrant from the seat 
of authority it has so long usurped will have to be under- 
taken before the new earth can appear, and will consti- 
tute a greater Armageddon than any battle in which 
the nations of the world could engage. How long before 
the end of this struggle will be reached " knoweth 
no man." It is the mental process, described in Jesus' 
well-known parable, of separating the wheat from the 
tares, between what is and what is not of God. In 
designating the tares as the " children of the wicked 
one," he clearly did not mean persons, but the offspring 
of the one wicked deception that life and reality exist 
apart from God; and these tares or errors are to be 
burned or destroyed at the full appearing of Truth. 
That human consciousness is now entering this period 
of mental separation wherein the old things are passing 
away and all things are becoming new, there is no doubt. 
In the consummation of this process, as the apostle in- 
timates, " the elements shall melt with fervent heat, the 
earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned 
up" — not in the heat of material fire but of divine 
revelation. That which expresses no divine quality can 
have no place in God's kingdom, and must belong to 
the "things that offend," to be consumed in the full 
realization of the allness of God. 

It is time that Christians cease thinking of Armaged- 
don as a coming maelstrom of blood and fire into which 
the nations are to be drawn, but rather as designating 
the period of human triumph over the flesh, or the ma- 
terial sense of creation, through the attainment o£ th£ 



ARMAGEDDON, AND AFTER 317 

spiritual ideals of Christianity. While it is true that the 
pathway of Israel, or spiritually awakening humanity, 
on the way to the Holy City, lies through Armageddon, 
that battle is with the serpent, not with men ; and it will 
be for the possession of the New Jerusalem of spiritual 
dominion, and not the Jerusalem of worldly power and 
authority. 

Giving an exclusively literal interpretation to the 
metaphors of the prophecies, or looking only at their 
material aspect, will not disclose the glory of latter-day 
events wherein God is to be understood as dwelling with 
men, but covers that period of joyous realization with 
the sombre anticipation of woe and disaster. The Chris- 
tians of these troubled days should not forget Jesus' in- 
junction to " look up," or away from the evidences of 
the carnal mind's commotion, and get the vision of the 
spiritual Christ again appearing to men. 

The heavenward progress of the race need not be 
accompanied by warfare and bloodshed, and the reign 
of righteousness in the earth will not be advanced by 
preaching the doctrine of impending evil. Human 
thought has improved since the days when the Hebrew 
prophets uttered their direful predictions; and while w^e 
know they had in view^ the deliverance of God's people 
Israel, we have reached the point where we can at least 
begin to impersonalize evil and its oppressions, and to 
look forward to the redemption of all men, without re- 
spect to race or nationality. 

The Comforter has appeared to direct mankind towards 
the heights of holiness and away from the strife and the 
passion of material thinking and living. Whatever may 
yet come to the surface in the course of evil's resistance 
to the forward movement of humanity, we can well 
leave to the morrow, and devote all we have to the tasks 
which are ours today. We may know that the will of 
the Father will yet be done on earth as it is in heaven, 
and we can ever turn to that wonderful prayer and 
prophecy with unfaltering desire and expectation. 



CHAPTER XXIX 
The First and Second Commandments of Israel 

Because he hath set his love upon Me, therefore will 
I deliver him. — Ps. 91 : 14. 

By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, 
if ye have love one to another. — John 13 : 35. 

THE freedom of humanity from the oppression of 
evil is an experience to be worked out in individual 
consciousness, and necessarily includes the recog- 
nition and fulfilment of the demands of God. The Scrip- 
tures state these demands in terms which place them 
wholly outside of all denominational creeds, theological 
dogmas, or philosophical theories, and in language so 
plain that " wayfaring men," however simple, need not 
err therein. In both the Old and the New Testaments, 
the Divine commandments are epitomized in a few sen- 
tences, and may be summarized in a single phrase, as love 
for God and man. 

The all-inclusive nature of divinity forbids an ac- 
quaintance with, the illusion of anything else, and this 
fact was perceived and stated by the inspired teachers in 
Israel. The law which inheres in the truth of God's allness 
was so clearly enunciated in the First Commandment, 
that it has remained the standard expression of His de^ 
mands upon men, and includes in its simple finality every- 
thing pertaining to human salvation. It covers the whole 
ground, not only of man's relation to God, but of men's 
relation to each other. It sums up the necessities of 
right thinking and living and is, consequently, the founda- 
tion of all true religion. The force of this command- 
ment is not binding upon men because it is stated in the 
Scriptures, but because the universality of good leaves 
no room for another god. Its application is not con- 
tingent upon the evil suggestion, that God permits men 



FIRST AND SECOND COMMANDMENTS 319 

to know something beside Him, but in the truth that 
something beside the infinite is impossible. It were cer- 
tainly no sin to acknowledge other gods if other gods 
there were, nor to acknowledge another creator if there 
were in reality another creator producing persons and 
things independently of God. 

The allness of Deity, which is implied in the First 
Commandment and in subsequent Scriptural revelation, 
does not, however, assign man and the universe to a 
region of nebulous nothingness, but places them in the 
divine consciousness where they rightly belong. Obviously 
an infinite Creator could fashion the universe only out 
of what is in Himself, so that we cannot regard creation 
as something set apart from Deity, but as the expression 
of His own thoughts. The son cannot be lost from the 
Father's presence, because His presence is universal, and 
in relation to which there is no outside sphere in which an- 
other creator and creation could exist. What, then, are 
Vv^e to say of that which assumes to contradict the First 
Commandment, and to assert a presence, power, intelli- 
gence, cause and effect which do not belong to God or 
come forth from Him? What other consistent attitude 
can one take than to treat it as that which has, in reality, 
neither substance nor existence? 

It should be plain that God's view of things does not 
coincide with the conclusions of materialism, and that it 
is only the material view which sees man as having lost 
his unity with his Maker, and to be moving in an orbit 
of sin and death. The law in Israel was, that God created 
man in His own likeness, and this law was never super- 
seded. It was in the sophistry of the serpent, whom 
Jesus pronounced a liar, that this divine order was re- 
versed, and man appeared as God's unlikeness; but the 
First Commandment does not recognize the serpent. It 
does not acknowledge a loss of unity or agreement be- 
tween creator and creation, nor does it imply that there 
is a creation and government going on outside of infin- 
ity; but it does signify and involve the absolute non- 
existence of any cause or effect apart from God. 



320 FOOTSTEPS OF ISRAEL 

According to the Scriptures, it was the great pur- 
pose and design af Israel to make good known, not to 
make evil known; it was to honor and obey God as 
supreme, not to acknowledge and bow down to other 
gods; it was to make the Gentiles acquainted with the 
God of Israel as the only God in all the earth, as the 
only power and intelligence, — it was not to teach these 
nations, or their own children, that evil was possessed 
of the same attributes which belong to Deity. It is time 
for Israel to awaken to her duty as God's witness in the 
earth, and to cease giving her testimony on the side of 
evil, because she cannot reasonably hope to inspire the 
Gentile nations with respect for her great First Com- 
mandment while she continues to dishonor it. Nor 
can she consistently teach this commandment to the 
heathen while in her own domain the belief of some- 
thing beside God is endowed with such tremendous 
power. 

Abraham, it will be remembered, left his father's 
house and kindred that he might have the freedom to 
worship and obey the one God, and the people of the 
earth were to be blessed in his obedience. It later de- 
volved upon Israel to destroy idolatry with the truth that 
there is but one God; and her troubles came upon her 
when she failed to carry out that trust, and bowed down 
to the false gods of the carnal mind precisely as the 
Gentile nations were doing. Is it not true that she is 
doing this today? Is not the array of evils, which fling 
out their challenge to the First Commandment, still 
acknowledged in Anglo-Saxon lands? Is it not true 
that everything which denies the presence and power 
of God is given a place there? And is not the forma- 
tion of man from the dust of the ground still accepted 
in modern Israel as the true modus of God's creation, 
although her own prophets rejected it? 

We have reached the time when the scientific or exact 
meaning of the oneness of Deity should be recognized 
and applied, inasmuch as human salvation cannot be 
worked out on any other foundation, or by any other rule. 



FIRST AND SECOND COMMANDMENTS 321 

No amount of emotional zeal for the personality of our 
great Master, nor of fervent professions of faith in his 
tragic self-sacrifice on the cross, will absolve any one 
from the requirements of this commandment; for Jesus 
said he came not to destroy but to fulfil the law. He 
came to *' destroy the works of the devil," that is, the 
idolatry of evil. No more imperative demand exists in 
Anglo-Saxon-Israel today, than to apprehend the inner 
meaning of that greater commandment which she out- 
wardly acknowledges, and the absolute necessity of com- 
plying with its terms, not perfunctorily or academically, 
but in deed and in truth. For of what avail is the effort 
to establish the identity of Israel in the present day, if 
she is to go on with the worship of her false gods? Or 
of what advantage will it be for the Anglo-Saxon race 
to know herself and be known as tlie present house of 
Israel, if the original purpose of Israel is not to become 
her paramount purpose also? 

The conditions of Israel's covenants are embodied in 
the First Commandment, and it must needs be obeyed in 
both the letter and the spirit before her part of these 
covenants can be satisfied and her debt cancelled. It is 
very evident that this command is not satisfied by an 
intellectual affirmation of belief in but one Deity, for 
the actual recognition of this divine oneness necessarily 
calls for the disavowal of aught else. For example, 
the acknowledgment that evil is power and intelligence 
is directly contrary to the clear meaning of the First 
Commandment, for a belief in other powers or minds 
than God is the very essence of idolatry, and cannot 
be made to appear as anything else. 

The law of the one God was, without exception, to 
have the precedence in Israel, and is inseparably bound 
up with everything pertaining to that people, and with 
every aspect of her position and destiny. Her natural 
selection as God's instrument in the earth could be for 
one purpose only, and that was, that through her every- 
thing unlike God in human consciousness was to be cast 
down and destroyed, a process which would necessarily 



322 FOOTSTEPS OF ISRAEL 

have to take place first in herself. Until this is done, she 
can do little towards casting evil out of other nations. 
The Master's metaphor of the mote and the beam is 
particularly applicable to Israel as the exponent of the 
one God, and the sooner she realizes this, and the sooner 
she ceases to endow the carnal mind with the attributes 
which rightly belong to Deity alone, the sooner she will 
be fitted for her appointed task. 

If the conditions of this commandment are to be in- 
terpreted as purely relative, we shall have to look forward 
to a universe perpetually divided between good and evil, 
and therefore perpetually at strife; but this is not the 
outlook furnished by the Scriptures. It was given to 
Israel to establish and uphold the truth of God's su- 
premacy, not simply as one among many lesser deities 
or powxrs, but as one alone. Let it be repeated again 
because of its importance, that it is the serpent of evil 
suggestion, not divine Truth, that has always argued 
for the reality of a power beside God, and that is still 
continuing that argument; but the place of Israel has 
never been on the side of the serpent. The very fact of 
her existence is a challenge to the carnal mind, and the 
Scriptures imply that her work will not be completed 
until all " enmity against God " has been destroyed. 

Jesus interpreted the First Commandment to mean 
such an undivided love for God as to leave no possible 
rival in the affections and thoughts of men. He did not 
intimate, however, that they would lose anything in put- 
ting all evil out of their consciousness; but on the con- 
trary, that the sacrifice of a false view of life, and of its 
relationships, pleasures, and possessions, would bring 
an abundant realization of the true idea of all that human 
sense holds dear. The logical inference is, that if one 
gives up his whole consciousness to good, he will find 
there is nothing else to truly have, hence that there 
is nothing to lose. To love God with all the mind would 
be equivalent to denying the existence of any other mind 
than good, since one could not love God with an evil 
mind. It follows, therefore, that evil-mindedness, ex- 



FIRST AND SECOND COMMANDMENTS 323 

pressing itself in the various forms of selfishness and 
vice, defines the false god which all mankind must re- 
nounce before God can reign supreme in their lives, 
and the kingdom of Satan be overthrown. 

Jesus' analysis of " the great commandment of all " 
should leave no one in doubt as to its requirements. It 
makes no provision for a nominal, halfway obedience, 
or for any concession to the argument that there is 
something apart from divinity that men may know and 
love. Jesus placed the relation between God and man 
in such a light as to leave no opportunity for evasion or 
misunderstanding. Men are either doing these things or 
they are not doing them. There is no subterfuge by 
which one can honestly deceive himself that he is obeying 
the First Commandment, while he is willingly sharing 
his thoughts with evil. It is little wonder that Israel 
of old fell down in her observance of this commandment, 
when we of Israel today, with our superior advan- 
tages, w^ith all the lessons of past experience, and with 
the higher teaching of Christianity, are so ready to with- 
hold part of our consciousness from God. 

Immediately following his paraphrase of the First 
Commandment, Jesus said, " And the second is like, 
namely this, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. 
There is none other commandment greater than these." 
In thus linking these commandments as practically one, 
Jesus made it plain that man as well as his Maker is to 
be found and acknowledged in the First Commandment. 
While Christians generally profess an adherence to this 
command so far as it relates to God, there is not the 
same readiness to accept its obviously implied injunction 
regarding man. It is not consistent, neither is it just to 
God, to acknowledge Him as the only power and creator, 
and then declare His creation to be evil and imper- 
fect. Although human sense claims to see the evidence 
of evil and imperfection, a supreme loyalty to God should 
prompt the correction of that sense, instead of accepting 
its testimony without question or protest. 

If Christians agree that there is but one God — and 



324 FOOTSTEPS OF ISRAEL 

they professedly do — and that there is, therefore, but 
one power and creator, they should in all consistency 
agree that there is but one type of man as His offspring. 
The very obvious corollary of the First Commandment 
is, Thou shalt have no other man than My image and 
likeness; for if God has continued the same from the be- 
ginning — and the Scriptures imply that He has — if His 
power and infinitude have continued the same, then the 
truth regarding man must have continued the same. The 
true God and the true man must of necessity be the only 
God and man there are at any time. If it were true, as 
the carnal m.ind would suggest, that God bestowed upon 
His own image the faculty to know evil and the power 
to obey it, then the First Commandment has been super- 
fluous; for, according to that assumption, good and evil 
would proceed from the same source and be essentially 
one. 

The general human belief in a type of man which is 
not the likeness of God necessarily implies a correspond- 
ing belief in a creator unlike Him to have fashioned man 
thus, a belief which at once involves the believer in idola- 
try. According to the inspired record, man was brought 
into being to express God, hence it naturally follows that 
all that is really true about a man is what he expresses 
of good. One cannot take an opposite position and at 
the same time honor the infinity of God. It is divinely 
and humanly impossible to identify omnipotence with 
Deitv, and at the same time identify His creation as 
under the domJnion of evil. The point that is too easily 
forgotten is, that according to the Eden allegory it was 
the serpent which first suggested man's separation from 
divinity, and which still works in the thoughts of men 
to perpetuate it. 

At the close of his last supper with his disciples, Jesus 
said, "A new commandment I give unto 3^ou, That ye 
love one another." He had centered the obsen^ance of 
the commandments into that one word, the sweetest in 
human language, which, in its highest and purest signifi- 
cance, the apostle named as synonymous with Deity. St. 



FIRST AND SECOND COMMANDMENTS 325 

Paul summed up the whole situation in other words when 
he said, " Love is the fulfilling of the law " ; while St. 
John made the issue still more emphatic in his analytical 
question, '' He that loveth not his brother whom he hath 
seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen ? " 

It stands without argument that a little more love 
would bring consciousness nearer heaven in every home, 
business, society, or nation where it is given the oppor- 
tunity. All that opposes this divine giving is the selfish 
human will detennined to sacrifice all other interests for 
its own, but nothing can compensate an individual or a 
nation for success or advancement achieved on that basis. 
However stubbornly human sense may struggle against 
this heavenly impluse, it must eventually reach the point 
where love will be recognized as the only bond among 
men, and nation will no longer lift up sword against 
nation. 

The realization of human brotherhood has remained 
the great unsolved problem of the ages, and will con- 
tinue unsolved until mankind learn the lesson of love, 
and cease returning wrong for wTong and hate for hate. 
The utterly heathenish concept of Deity, as approving the 
ancient custom of exacting an eye for an eye and a tooth 
for a tooth, which naturally inculcated the belief that it 
was justifiable to hate one's enemies, expressed the an- 
tithesis of the God of Israel. This was the doctrine of 
the carnal mind which, as Jesus taught, *' was a murderer 
from the beginning." Hatred between nations and 
peoples is not removed by conquests or by treaties, but by 
the divine spirit ; for the former simply bank the smoul- 
dering fires of jealousy and distrust, while love would put 
them out. It is evident that nothing is more urgently 
needed at the nation's conference tables, in their legisla- 
tures, clubs, homes, industries, and associations, than 
less resentment, passion, and greed, and more kindness, 
generosity, and love. Once this divine plant begins to 
take root and to grow in the hearts of men, and the na- 
tions begin to gather its heavenly fruit, the coming of 
the kingdom will be drawing nigh, but not until then. 



326 FOOTSTEPS OF ISRAEL 

Jesus' new commandment makes loving a law, and 
law declares itself as a necessity, not as a choice. Since 
" all the law is fulfilled in one word," namely, love for 
one's neighbor, as the Scripture states, then love is the 
only remedy for lawlessness in all its forms, and there 
remains no other foundation for right government. This 
law of divinity is perpetual in its demand, and admits of 
no exceptions. There are no crossroads into the king- 
dom of heaven, and it is the kingdom of heaven that each 
individual and each nation are striving to enter, whether 
they would define their aims in these terms or not. What 
all mankind are seeking for is happiness, however dif- 
ferently they may spell the word, but that search cannot 
be permanently successful except as consciousness be- 
comes identified with goodness and love. The tragic 
records of history disclose the bitter failure of mortals 
to find satisfaction through any of the avenues of the 
carnal mind. Were it otherwise, were it possible to 
enter the Heavenly City by any other road than the 
attainment of the mind that was in Christ Jesus, the com- 
mandments reaffirmed by him would cease to be a law to 
men, and his teachings become as idle words. 

The new commandment of Jesus has this feature in 
common with the old, that it is wholly outside the realm 
of doctrinal differences and limitations. It belongs to 
one church or creed no more than to another, but without 
it, no church or creed possesses any real power or vitality. 
It is the new commandment of Christianity, and must 
be the watchword of Israel when she reappears; hence 
its close relation to this whole subject, for it is plain 
that one cannot rule with God, or be conscious of son- 
ship with Him, without love. Israel, be it not forgotten, 
is not a sentimental name for a race supposed to be 
historically dead; in its highest spiritual sense it repre- 
sents that living reality of God's fatherhood which be- 
longs to every age, and which pertains to one people 
more than to another only as that people possesses and 
expresses more of its meaning and power. Israel, there- 
fore, can develop into the fulness of fruition only as 



FIRST AND SECOND COMMANDMENTS 327 

she is nourished by that love which discerns the godlike 
in man as embodying the only truth of creation. 

The awakening and return of Israel through the 
Scriptures, which has already been referred to, means 
her awakening to the revelation of God as Love, and of 
His law as love; not as meaning the expression of human 
emotion, but as possessing the consciousness which 
" thinketh no evil." The love which '* worketh no ill " 
to one's neighbor is surely the m.ost practical feature of 
all ethics and religion, but it does not stop at that nega- 
tive point of accomplishment, for it finds its powder in the 
performance of good deeds. This must of necessity be 
the activity w^hich is to prevail in Israel in the time of her 
restoration, since without it she would have no means by 
which to become God's witness among the nations. With- 
out it, she could not show the Gentiles the nature of the 
God of Israel, whereas with it she will divinely impel them 
to acknowledge and worship Him. This neighborly love, 
this charity which " suffereth long and is kind " to 
enemies and friends alike, which forgives wrongs and 
cherishes no revenge, is the only weapon which will make 
her mighty in the earth. 

We learn from the records that the people of Israel 
shared the general weaknesses of mortals. They loved 
their friends and hated their enemies after the fashion 
of the day, believing that that was the right thing to do. 
Although they acknowledged but one Deity, they did not 
fully perceive that that one must be infinite in order to 
be supreme. They had not seen the other side of the 
First Commandment in its inclusion of man, and it re- 
mained for the Messiah to announce the law of loving, 
even to the extent of including one's enemies, as cor- 
related to the great commandment of Israel. Jesus taught 
that it was as binding upon men to love one another as it 
was for them to love God. This was an entirely new doc- 
trine, in the light in which he presented it, and after al- 
most two thousand years it is not yet universally accepted 
and practised, even in Christendom. As the great Teacher 
pointed out, with his usual incisiveness, it is no virtue to 



328 FOOTSTEPS OF ISRAEL 

love one's friends, or to do good to them who do good 
to us; but to love them that hate us, and to do good to 
them that despitefully use us, is the demand which is 
waiting to be satisfied before it can truly be said that 
we are disciples of the Lord. 

It particularly rests with the people of Israel, the 
people who are learning the reality of divine things, to 
light the beacon fires of love upon her high hills, that 
the nations may catch the vision of a people willing to 
live and to prosper only in their consciousness of good. 
How long it may be before that day dawns is not so 
important as that Israel shall now begin to see and ac- 
knowledge that her destiny lies in the direction which 
God had pointed out to Abraham, " Walk before Me, 
and be thou perfect." 



CHAPTER XXX 
"A Light to Lighten the Gentiles" 

The Lord hath made bare His holy arm in the eyes of 
all the nations; and all the ends of the earth shall see 
the salvation of our God. — Isa. 52 : 10. 

In every nation he that feareth Him, and worketh 
righteousness, is accepted with Him. — Acts 10:35. 

That was the true Light, which lighteth every man that 
Cometh into the world. — John i : 9. 

IN early Biblical times, when the descendants of Jacob 
had become a nation by themselves, the God of 
Israel was little known or acknowledged outside of 
her own borders, and this contributed to the conception 
and development of a sense of exclusiveness in their re- 
lation to Deity; but there is nothing in the Scriptures, 
when read in the light of the whole, to indicate that the 
function of Israel as "a peculiar treasure" unto the 
Lord was a selfish one, or that the Israelites were to con- 
tinue the sole people of His pasture. Their better knowl- 
edge of God undoubtedly set them apart from the pagan 
nations, but that very knowledge was itself an inexorable 
and continuous command to take it to all the earth. 

Israel's relation to the rest of mankind was plainly set 
forth in the covenant with Abraham, but was apparently 
lost sight of by the majority of the Israelites, until the 
belief that they, out of all the inhabitants of the earth, 
were to be the people of God became firmly grounded in 
the national consciousness, and was practically a part of 
the national religion. That they should entertain this 
view of their position is not surprising when one con- 
siders the unusual circumstances which attended the birth 
of this nation, together with the extremely impressionable 
nature of all primitive people. The nations about them 
with whom they came in contact were quite as fixed in 
their racial prejudices, and quite as strongly imbued with 
their own religious peculiarities, and these differences 
served to separate them mentally from the Israelites. It 



330 FOOTSTEPS OF ISRAEL 

is this fact of mental separation, the product of unlike 
concepts of Deity, which has constituted and maintained 
the barriers between the nations, and particularly between 
Israel and the Gentile peoples. 

The coming of Christianity changed the whole face of 
the human problem, for in its teachmgs, and in the pos- 
sibilities which it includes for all men, the lines between 
races and peoples were erased. When Jesus said, " Call 
no man your father upon the earth," he not only rebuked 
the claims of human parentage but of racial distinctions, 
and his words prophetically point to the time when all 
national differences will be obliterated. His statement 
that he was sent to " the lost sheep of the house of 
Israel" did not imply that his mission ended there; but 
on the contrary, that these lost sheep were to be brought 
back for the purpose of filling their destined place as 
God's light-bearers to the Gentiles. 

Nations, like individual mortals, have been moulded 
by influences which date back to the earliest beginnings 
of humanity, when a sense of evil was supposed to have 
entered the nature and consciousness of man, and the 
race was cradled in the belief, of the naturalness of 
animal propensities, and in the freedom to obey them. 
Although believed to have sprung from a common an- 
cestor, differences in individual temperament, qualities, 
and inclinations arose from the outset, afterwards w^Iden- 
ing and extending into family and national distinctions. 
The conditions peculiar to each of these divided groups, 
implanted in their offspring and confirmed in the educa- 
tion of successive generations, perpetuated the distinctive 
customs, manners, and appearance of the various branches 
of the human family, and they still continue to differ- 
entiate the races of the earth. 

In the face of these deep-rooted dissimilarities and 
antagonisms, the task of working out the expression of 
a common human brotherhood would seem stupendous; 
yet only as this is being accomplished is the world-family 
coming nearer together in any permanent or redemptive 
sense. The leaven which is to permeate and spiritually 



"A UGHT TO LIGHTEN THE GENTILES" 



331 



homogenize this mixed human multitude is the truth em- 
bodied in Christianity, embracing as it does the universal 
fatherhood of God and the universal kinship of man in 
His likeness. Jesus' mission, it is very clear, was not to 
preserve the standing antipathies between the nations, 
but to bring all mankind into the one fold of Christian 
brotherhood. He made no attempt to accomplish this 
through a belief in the physical creation of man, but upon 
the ground of the new birth, or the recognition of man's 
spiritual origin, wherein and whereof God is the sole 
Mind or intelligence. 

The theory, generally believed and acted upon, that 
there are **as many minds as men," came forth from the 
carnal mind, and is but another edition of its original 
lie that man was endowed with a consciousness independ- 
ent of his Creator. This is the doctrine of the old birth, 
not of the new; of the " old man," not the ''new man"; 
and it fathers and fosters all the dissensions and dis- 
cords which have turned the earth into a battle ground. 
It is plain that the harmonizing influence which is to 
bring mankind into accord cannot emanate from such a 
source or exploit such a doctrine. 

The light which was to shine forth from Israel upon 
the nations was not a personality; it was the truth of 
being demonstrated, the truth which antedated Abraham, 
w^hich was present when "the morning stars sang to- 
gether," and whose human appearing was welcomed by 
the Judean shepherds, a truth which is waiting at every 
man's door to bring him freedom from the oppressor. 
This light, which was radiant in the life and ministry of 
Jesus, is called the Christ, the truth of man's divinity as 
the Son of God, which alone can illumine the darkness 
of the world's materialism, and light the way to the 
" City of God." 

Although this truth and its embodiment came to 
human recognition in the consciousness of the Hebrew 
people, it was not for the exaltation of that people above 
other nations, but that thev should tread humbly in the 
footsteps of their King. The crowning glory of Israel, 



332 FOOTSTEPS OF ISRAEL 

as made manifest in the advent of the Messiah, was in 
lighting the dark places of the earth; it was not to treat 
the outside nations as inferiors, or as unworthy of 
Jehovah's care, but to know that her Lord was the Lord 
of all men. The narrow view that would set Israel, in 
the sense of racial superiority, apart from the rest of the 
world, was lost sight of in the broad application of the 
truths of Christianity, and there is no ground today upon 
which to revive it. Thus while Israel would seem to 
present an exclusively peculiar and self-contained type of 
national consciousness, upon closer approach her doors 
are seen to stand wide open, not only that the stranger 
may enter and find a new home, but that her messengers 
may go out to all people with the good tidings committed 
to her. The prophecies of the restoration, it is true, in- 
clude the resumption of her nationhood, but they do not 
point to the revival of that overweening belief of per- 
sonal preeminence to which the early Hebrews so fondly 
clung. 

The relations between the various divisions of the 
human family have greatly changed since Israel went into 
captivity. With improved means and methods of trans- 
portation and communication the nations of the world 
have come closer together, — in their associations if not 
in their ideals ; and when Israel again recognizes herself 
as a nation it will be with a vastly different sense of her 
relation to other peoples. Her many centuries of exile 
among other races have served largely to obliterate her 
old-time prejudices, although the Jew, on the other hand, 
living much in his thought of the past, feeling the sting 
of Gentile persecution, and untouched by the liberalizing 
influence of Christianity, has retained a large measure of 
his contempt for all races but his own. 

Although national jealousies and conflicting ambitions, 
unless tempered by the Christian spirit, are easily irri- 
tated into war, the freer intercourse of the advancing 
centuries has brought the peoples of the earth into a 
larger feeling of fellowship and interest, and it only waits 
the leavening power of a live Christianity to break down 



"A LIGHT TO LIGHTEN THE GENTILES" 333 

the wall of partition between them. This end, of course, 
is not something to be reached in the space of a few years, 
but we can welcome a beginning in that direction, and 
with more intelligent expectations can contemplate the 
world situation in a tolerant attitude, and prepare for that 
spiritual unity of consciousness which must sometime be 
realized before heaven and earth can universally become 
one. 

While it is true that Great Britain through her colonies, 
and the United States, do not, under pardonable excep- 
tions, close their gates to the people of other lands, the 
unity of the human race will not be accomplished through 
the absorption of one nation by another. The Anglo- 
Saxon race cannot become the melting-pot for all hu- 
manity, for even if a fusion of the world's races were 
physically possible, it would not uplift human conscious- 
ness or blend its discordant elements. The amalgamation 
of unlike qualities is neither practicable nor desirable, for 
that which is unholy will be unholy still, and that which 
is filthy will be filthy still, and the presence of these 
defiling and destructive states would make unity and 
peace impossible. Such things do not spring from blood, 
but from unrighteous thinking, hence there is no way 
through the mixture of races, no naturalizing process by 
which mortals may become one in mind and heart. There- 
fore the cause of human brotherhood will not be radically 
(advanced by simply opening the front door to the alien 
and the stranger, but by lighting their way to better 
things. The hand w^hich Israel holds out to the Gentiles 
must have a torch in it to illumine the path to God's 
kingdom, if it is not to be a case of the blind attempting 
to lead the blind. 

But Israel can hold that torch aloft only as the spiritual 
ideal of being is lifted up in her. While the world and 
the flesh absorb the thought of Anglo-Saxondom, what 
has she wherewith to light the way of the nations to the 
God of Israel? How can she reflect to them the light 
which glows in the face of Christ if she permits the pres- 
ence of materialism to hide that light from herself? 



334 FOOTSTEPS OF ISRAEL 

There is no doubt that the disclosure of Israel's identity 
in the Anglo-Saxon race will prove a louder call to that 
nation than she has ever heard to forsake the mammon 
of worldliness and to become God's missionary in the 
earth in a larger meaning and in a more practical form 
than she has yet realized. 

The reader will have learned to bear with the repeti- 
tion of certain truths as he recognizes their essential ap- 
plication to the various phases of this great question. 
The restoration of national Israel, in fulfilment of the 
Scriptures, can be for one purpose only, — also in fulfil- 
ment of the Scriptures, — and that is the Christianization 
of mankind. There is no other end in which the Scrip- 
tures are concerned, or towards which they point. There- 
fore it is not at all a question of power or wealth or num- 
bers, as the world reckons these things, except as they 
are being devoted to that one paramount task of this age. 
It were surely better that nothing be said about the 
restoration of Israel if that event is simply to promote 
the prominence of one race, or to class that race as being 
superior in the sight of God, or as possessing a privileged 
place in His design. 

Unless evil is to gain the mastery over good and ma- 
terialism smother the divine impulses of spirituality, the 
conclusion is unescapable that the people of all the nations 
will sometime have to recognize themselves as children 
of God ; and that awakening knowledge will have to reach 
them from the people whose consciousness reflects the 
most divinity; and that people will be the Israel of today. 
If Anglo-Saxons answer best to that description, it is 
no cause for vainglory, or for any assumption of self- 
importance, but for humility and prayer that they may 
be loyal to their trust. A good beginning has been made 
in distributing the Word of God among practically all 
the tribes and races of the earth, but is this being fol- 
lowed up with the proofs of the power of that Word? 
Will the letter of the Scriptures, however widely scattered 
and fervently preached, accomplish the quickening work 
of the Spirit? If the signs of Moses are not being taken 



"A LIGHT TO LIGHTEN THE GENTILES" 335 

to those in bondage to the carnal mind, why are they not ? 

The task of bringing mankind into spiritual agree- 
ment faces Anglo-Saxons today, and it is plain to even 
the wayfaring man that this cannot be brought about by 
any human expedient, political treaty, or war of conquest. 
If the disparities of education, environment, opportunity, 
and so forth, could be equalized, the members of the less 
privileged races would be found the equals of the more 
favored of mankind; but for most of them these dispari- 
ties are not yet equalized,- hence the call for the helping 
hand and the reflected light that the less privileged among 
humankind may find their way to a better experience and 
a larger life, and thus bring that new earth nearer 
wherein are only right things. 

The differences of thought, temperament, ideals, and 
aims which now exist among the races are not intrinsic 
but incidental, and will disappear as men arrive at the 
same conception of Deity. The light which reveals God 
as the only Creator, reveals also the way by which all men 
may come into oneness of thought, love the same things, 
feel the same impulse of goodness, and travel together up 
the hill of the Lord. In this light, and no other, men may 
come to see one another as God's image, and acknowledge 
no other law and feel no other bond than love. This is not 
the vision of a dreamer; it presents the logical outcome of 
the practice of Christ's teachings, and will come into hu- 
man experience when humanity is ready to have it there. 

Let no member of a so-called Gentile race feel that 
the stigma of inferiority has been stamped upon his peo- 
ple, or that the door into the spiritual heritage of Israel 
is closed upon him. The pathway to a knowledge of the 
true God, not in the narrow sense of a national Jehovah, 
but as the Father whom Jesus revealed to men, is open 
to every human being. In the words of Isaiah, " The 
Gentiles shall come to thy light, and kings to the bright- 
ness of thy rising," and in that bright light of Truth 
there will be " neither Greek nor Jew, circumcision nor 
uncircumcision. Barbarian, Scythian, bond nor free: but 
Christ is all, and in all." (Col. 3 : 11.) 



CHAPTER XXXI 
Paradise Regained, or the Dream Dispelled 

Awake, awake; put on thy strength, O Zion: put on 
thy beautiful garments, O Jerusalem, the holy city : for 
henceforth there shall no more come into thee the un- 
circumcised and the unclean. 

Shake thyself from the dust; arise, and sit down, O 
Jerusalem: loose thyself from the bands of thy neck, 
O captive daughter of Zion. — Isa. 52 : i, 2. 

And that, knowing the time, that now it is high time 
to awake out of sleep. — Rom. 13:11. 

WE have now traversed in review that long journey, 
if stated in terms of time, which started from the 
gates of Eden towards the realm of spiritual 
being. We have seen how the woman's protest against the 
sophistry of evil suggestion took root in human conscious- 
ness, and brought forth the movement known as Israel, a: 
movement which in time was destined to fill the earth 
with a knowledge of the truth. In retrospect we have 
walked with the early Hebrew patriarchs, watched the 
rise of Israel and its development into a nation, and 
have followed the remarkable course of that nation dur- 
ing the fifteen centuries between Abraham and the cap- 
tivity. We have stood with Moses in Horeb where he 
received such a revelation of the being of God that he 
was enabled to bring the Israelites out of Egypt, take 
them safely through the Red Sea, and to feed and clothe 
them during their forty years' sojourn in the wilderness. 
We have observed with reverent awe the many wonder- 
ful things which were done by Moses and the prophets, 
in the name and by their knowledge of the God of Israel, 
not as spectacular marvels but as proofs of divine power. 
We have noted how, in later years, the mesmerism of 
surrounding idolatry, or the worship of matter in the 
place of Spirit, enticed national Israel from allegiance 
to her God, and led to her long banishment among the 



PARADISE REGAINED 337 

Gentiles, an exile in the course of which she lost her 
national unity and identity. Coming to our own day we 
have observed the unmistakable signs of Israel's return 
from that exile, both literally and spiritually, and have 
witnessed her entrance into the earliest phases of Arma- 
geddon; but from this point on, one's consideration of 
this subject must be largely prospective and introspective. 

The present period without doubt marks the early 
dawning of the " day of the Lord," or that seventh day 
of holiness which completes the record of creation, in 
which the goodness and perfection of God and of His 
work is to be recognized. It is the so-called millennial 
age in which mankind will learn to rest from their 
labors with matter, and will turn to Mind as the source 
of man's existence and activity. In the brighter light of 
divine revelation which has come to this period, men will 
rise to the perception of heavenly things, and no longer 
content with the false teaching that man is of the earth 
earthy, will recognize their spiritual sonship with God. 

Whatever of progress has been achieved by our race 
is due to the fact that men have not been satisfied to 
remain in ignorance of better things, and this wholesome 
discontent with unideal methods and conditions has 
wrought a vast betterment in human affairs. The ex- 
istence of perfection makes improvement not only pos- 
sible but imperative, a rule which applies also to moral 
and spiritual things. Religion cannot remain forever 
unprogressive. It is undeniable that the truth about God 
and man exists and is available, and because of this there 
is that in the hearts of men which will not let them rest 
satisfied until they perceive and possess it. Although 
the inertia of animality may seem for a time to resist 
the demands of man's inherent divinity, its latent power 
or attraction will eventually make itself felt, until it 
becomes humanly irresistible. Human salvation from 
evil is more than a privilege, it is a necessity; and the 
impelling force of this necessity is expressing itself with 
increasing earnestness and insistence through every 
avenue of enlightened thought. 



338 FOOTSTEPS OF ISRAEL 

The only changes in human belief which can be gen- 
uinely classified as progressive are those which conduce 
to a better acquaintance with God; but whatever leaves 
the thoughts of men as firmly in the grasp of matter as 
before, or impresses its demands more deeply upon them, 
clearly is not progress. It is their sense of materiality, 
and not spiritual law that binds mortals to the experience 
of sin and death, and their freedom or deliverance from 
such experience cannot be obtained from a material 
source. Thus it becomes unavoidable that men must 
become spiritually-minded in order to reach immortality, 
which means that material-mindedness and mortality are 
synonymous. Why, then, is the teaching still current 
in Christendom, that God's image and likeness, the 
original man, was created from dust, inasmuch as this 
teaching has been the great bulwark of materialism, in 
investing its decrees with the sanction of divine law? 
To make progress spiritually while fettered to this doc- 
trine is not possible ; yet to grow more spiritual and less 
material is what Christianity distinctly calls for. 

The regaining of paradise, the end which all men hope 
for, is not something to be experienced suddenly, either 
here or hereafter. It is the transformation of human 
consciousness, in which a material sense of life is given 
up for the spiritual, a transformation which will be objec- 
tified to that consciousness in the new heaven and earth. 
It is the putting off of the " old man," and the putting on 
of the new or perfect man as constituting the only reality 
of God's creation. St Paul thus wrote to the Ephesians 
concerning this process : " For you have learnt with 
regard to your former way of living that you must cast 
off your old nature, which yielding to deluding passions, 
grows corrupt; that the very spirit of your minds must 
be constantly renewed; and that you must clothe your- 
selves in that new nature which was created to resemble 
God, with the righteousness and holiness springing from 
the Truth" (Twentieth Century Translation). This re- 
generative practice plainly involves the laying off, or 
the outgrowing, of the fleshly nature entirely, not in a 



PARADISE REGAINED 339 

moment of material dying, but in progressive, spiritual 
living. 

In the foregoing passage, and in the phrase immedi- 
ately following, '' Since, therefore, you have cast off 
what is false," the apostle confirms the position taken 
by Christ Jesus, and in this age by Christian Science: 
namely, that the evil in human nature is delusive and 
untrue, and that it must be denied, put aside — call it 
what you will — in order that the true man, the only 
man whom God creates and acknowledges, may come to 
light. Jesus never taught any other mode of salvation 
or regeneration than this. The apostle, it is true, said, 
** Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be 
saved," and Christians have thereby been encouraged 
to found their hope of salvation upon the popular mean- 
ing of the word belief; but the Master gave the meaning 
of this saving faith in no unequivocal terms when he said, 
" He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he 
do also." It should be too apparent for argument that 
one cannot enter the Holy City and take his old self, 
or the man of dust, along with him; and that admission 
covers, in practically all its details,' the whole ground of 
the unreality of whatever is not of God. Somewhere 
along the line of our journey we must be willing to 
learn the truth about these things, and to understand 
the significance of Jesus' saying, " If any man will come 
after me, let him deny himself." 

The footsteps of Israel, as they emerge from her exile 
among the Gentiles, are turned towards the Holy City, 
the New Jerusalem; they are not turned towards her 
former errors. They are not set towards the old Jeru- 
salem of worldly pride and dominion, of ecclesiastical 
bigotry and formalism, but towards the consciousness 
of her new inheritance in the Messiah. Israel was to 
be the pathfinder for the nations to "the mountain 
of the Lord's house," and in days to come, if she is 
true to her trust, we shall find all of them gathered 
there. All this means, of course, that the coming back 
of Israel, in the spiritual sense, will be such a revival of 



340 FOOTSTEPS OE ISRAEL 

the Messianic teaching and practice as to be denominated 
the second appearing of the Christ, not as a human being, 
but as the redemptive or regenerative Truth revealed to 
mankind by Jesus of Nazareth. 

It is logically undeniable that these days of prophetic 
fulfilment are to witness the reappearance of the Chris- 
tianity which its Founder identified with healing the 
sick and casting out evil. It is certain that the absence 
of healing power from the doctrinal Christianity which 
has been presented to the world leaves a tremendous gap 
between it and the example of Jesus, and this gap must 
be bridged over before it can be truly said that the Christ 
has returned among men. IndifTerence or unbelief re- 
specting this Christian requirement proves neither one's 
superiority to it nor exemption from it, but only how 
great is the necessity of being aroused to the true situ- 
ation. The wide acceptance of material means and 
methods as a substitute for divine power does not prove 
that God is not the best healer, or that these substitutes 
are consonant with Christ's Christianity; it only proves 
in what a strong grasp the carnal mind is still holding 
the thoughts of Christians. 

This is a much broader question than the mere restora- 
tion of physical health. It is an integral part of human 
salvation from evil, and for that reason permanent heal- 
ing cannot be effected materially. One phase of the 
carnal mind cannot correct another. The primary pur- 
pose of Christian healing is not merely to restore the 
enjoyment of sensuous comfort, or to prolong a physical 
sense of life, but to prove, in a degree, that God is the 
life of man, and to lift individual thought that much 
higher. " The fruit of the Spirit," said the apostle, " is 
love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, 
faith, meekness, temperance." These are the pharmaco- 
poeia of Christianity, the health-giving and health-restor- 
ing qualities pertaining to true manhood; while their 
carnal opposites are the source and condition of weak- 
ness and disease, and these no material agency can 
remedy. Jesus never taught that there were two Saviours 



PARADISE REGAINED 341 

for men, nor did he authorize his followers to divide 
the function of Christianity between matter and Spirit. 
When the Christ appears the second time it will not be 
to exonerate the neglect to obey his commands, but to 
resurrect the dead faith of Christendom, and again to 
seek and to save " that which was lost." 

The covenant with Israel was, ^' I will take sickness 
away from the midst of thee," and the condition on the 
part of Israel was, " Ye shall serve the Lord your God." 
Is Israel today serving the Lord her God? If not, why 
not? What ''strange gods" are being worshipped in 
her? The lamentable fact that sickness still flourishes 
throughout Christendom, and that, too, under the very 
shadow of her churches, proves that something is wrong, 
either with the prevailing exposition of religion, or with 
the practice w^hich grows out of it, for the God of Israel 
has ever proved to be a covenant-keeping God. It is 
evident that the appeal for help to other so-called powers 
is not serving God according to the terms of the First 
Commandment; therefore this covenant has remained 
inoperative except in its negative application. One of 
the foremost signs of returning Israel will be her recog- 
nition of this covenant; and unless there is some definite 
and sincere attempt on the part of this people to seek 
the divine way out of sickness and kindred evils, wq 
had better not talk overmuch of what is being accom- 
plished in the way of Israel's restoration; for, as has been 
said in these pages over and over again, if the spiritual 
restoration is lacking, the mere literal or external return 
would mean absolutely nothing, so far as blessing the 
nations of the world is concerned. 

The Scriptures consistently point to the time when the 
human material sense of things will be replaced by the 
spiritual, and then will come what is called the end of 
the world, — not the end of anything which God has 
created, but the end of mortals' mistaken beliefs about 
creation. It is plain that w^e cannot take the things of 
the material world into paradise, for everything which 
the eyes see and the hands handle is perishable and im- 



342 FOOTSTEPS OF ISRAEL 

permanent. The things which make up the world of 
human sense, bounded by time and embraced in matter, 
short-Hved in beauty and bom only to decay, express 
the ephemeral nature of dreams; and the plain inference 
is that mortals must waken from this phantasmagoria 
of sensuous living and dying and open their eyes spirit- 
ually to the things which are eternal. 

The " first resurrection," spoken of by St. John the 
Revelator as belonging to the period of the Second Ad- 
vent, is, without doubt, the awakening of human sense 
from the belief that life is material and mortal, to the 
perception that man is spiritual and immortal. Speaking 
prophetically of the same period and the same event 
Daniel said, " And many of them that sleep in the dust 
of the earth shall awake." Human sense or conscious- 
ness has buried itself in its belief of animated dust, and 
is waiting for the quickening voice of the Christ to 
break its delusion. Those who look for a literal resur- 
rection of material bodies from the earth fail to grasp 
the abounding use of metaphors and symbols in the 
Scriptures. When Paul wrote to the Ephesians, " Awake 
thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead," he was not 
implying that they were literally asleep or literally dead; 
but to the extent that mortals accept matter as the source 
and fact of life, they are dead to the spiritual sense of 
life as God. 

In his proof that life is not in the material body, and 
that the grave could not lay its corrupting hand upon 
the Son of God, Christ Jesus has been called '' the first- 
fruits of them that slept " ; but this phrase very clearly 
does not refer to those who had passed away in death, 
for Lazarus and others had been raised from the dead, 
in that sense, before Jesus' resurrection. The apostle was 
evidently referring to the human sense of life as material, 
for the Master was the first to prove that sense to be 
absolutely false. The first resurrection, therefore, is 
the human emergence from the conception of life as in 
and of matter, described in Genesis as the "deep sleep" 
which came upon Adam, to the perception that Spirit is 
the life of all that exists. 



PARADISE REGAINED 343 

" Afterward they that are Christ's at his coming," — 
what coming? Not a vision of flesh and blood, surely, 
for what could such a vision do towards arousing men 
to the consciousness of spiritual life? The first coming 
of the Christ to human sense was as a fleshly babe; but 
the second coming, — " unto them that look for him," 
— which is to lift those who get this vision to the spir- 
itual apprehension of being, must necessarily transcend 
all physical sense. '' He is not here, but is risen," the 
angel said to Mary at the sepulchre, and we in this day 
must also cease looking for Christ in the flesh if we 
w^ould see the Lord. 

" The hour cometh and now is," said Jesus, " when 
the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God, and 
they that hear shall live." And again, "Ye will not 
come unto me that ye might have life." It is apparent 
that he was not here speaking to dead men, nor concern- 
ing men's dead bodies, but of the materially deadened 
consciousness of mortals. " To be carnally minded is 
death," said the apostle; in other words, the concept of 
life as existing in matter is mortality's self. The sense 
of man as animated dust is the *' first Adam," in which, 
as Paul pointed out, " all die," or all are dead ; but in 
Christ, the " last Adam," the image of God, " shall all 
be made alive." These passages clearly illustrate the 
figurative meaning of the word " dead " in its relation to 
the first resurrection. 

This awakening of human thought to the perception 
that man is the spiritual image and likeness of God, and 
not a sinful mortal, is the central feature of the return of 
the Christ, and the vital element in the millennial period. 
Without it there could be no genuine advance towards 
the Heavenly City, the New Jerusalem of restored Israel, 
for without it things would naturally continue as they 
were. That this spiritual quickening of thought has 
begun in the coming of Christian Science, and is mak- 
ing its influence widely felt, cannot be reasonably ques- 
tioned. Its effects are being made manifest in various 
departments of thought where material conservatism 



344 FOOTSTEPS OF ISRAEL 

had long held control. They may be seen in the improve- 
ment taking place in denominational creeds, in the in- 
creasing conviction that the churches must return to 
the healing works enjoined by Christ Jesus, and in the 
growing desire, felt among all classes, for a more prac- 
tical adaptation of Christianity to daily living, so that it 
may become the power in human life it was plainly de- 
signed to be. 

From age to age mankind have been wearily seeking 
the way to lost paradise, and the means of reopening its 
gates, but the serpent has held them in the wilderness by 
perpetuating the belief that material existence is the wak- 
ing reality of life. The human sleepers in the dust of 
the earth, held in the spell of the deceitful senses, have 
looked for happiness in every direction except the one 
way of spiritual awakening. The hope held out to mor- 
tals, that they may eventually die their way into paradise, 
has been the sop of materialism in religion, and the most 
pathetic of the deceptions foisted upon the race in the 
name of Christianity. A' careful study of the inspired 
Word, and especially the teachings of Christ Jesus, plainly 
show that men must live their way into heaven. Neither 
reason nor revelation points to any other possible way. 

It should be obvious to every one that death cannot 
open the door for mortals into spiritual and immortal 
consciousness, since death is itself but a phase of ma- 
teriality, and is the natural outcome of believing that life 
exists separate from its divine source. Inasmuch as 
God is omnipresent. He can be no nearer to a mortal after 
he stops breathing than he was before. Men are no 
further from heaven now than their own thoughts put 
them, and until they lessen and overcome that distance 
by purer thinking and by the actual possession and prac- 
tice of goodness, they will not reach the consciousness of 
perfect and immortal being. Death is a denial of life, 
a contradiction of immortality, not the pathway to it; 
and God, in whom alone man can truly live, does not 
make his heavenly security conditional upon death. 

Jesus did not teach that men must die to enter the 



PARADISE REGAINED 345 

kingdom of heaven, but that they must be " born again," 
which is an entirely contrary proposition. Mortals begin 
their earthly education with an erroneous concept of life 
as beginning with dust instead of with God; and from 
that wrong starting-point everything has been learned 
wrongly, man being represented all the way through as 
the exact opposite of God's image and likeness. Hence 
the absolute necessity of reversing this false teaching 
and of getting the true and spiritual starting-point whence 
to learn the divine facts of being. 

Jesus' uncompromising statement regarding the new 
birth is the strongest arraignment of the material concept 
of life or of man's creation from dust that has ever been 
uttered ; and not until this new birth, this transformation 
of human thought to a spiritual basis, has truly begun 
in one's experience, does he get a glimpse of the new 
heaven and earth of Spirit. St. John's w^onderful vision 
of the Holy City, the '' new Jerusalem coming down from 
God out of heaven," is evidently not something to be seen 
after death, but relates to the spiritual awakening to be 
sometime realized on earth, when the beliefs of materi- 
ality have been put out of consciousness, and nothing is 
left that " worketh or maketh a lie." 

It is self-evident that a dream is not dispelled by tarry- 
ing contentedly among its delusions, nor by peering 
credulously into its shadows, but by opening one's eyes 
to reality. The night-dreams of mortals yield sooner 
or later to the waking phenomena and disappear as illu- 
sions. If there were no facts of the day to return to, the 
night-dream would be the individual's normal experience 
and would permanently continue. Likew^ise, if there were 
no waking spiritual reality, the events of so-called ma- 
terial existence would necessarily be the truth of being, 
and there would be no hope or opportunity of escape 
from its evils; but Jesus demonstrated the actuality of 
spiritual life, and thereby proved the dread shadows of 
material sense to be as the fallacies of dreams. In his 
final evidence of man's deathless being, Jesus became 
the hope of the race, and the Wayshower for mortals 
out of all error, including even the "last enemy." 



346 FOOTSTEPS OF ISRAEL 

When one awakens from a dream he knows that it 
was unreal. We do not play the parts or perform the 
grotesque acts depicted there. No one erects the houses 
or builds the ships or plants the flowers or paves the 
streets which appear to mortals in dreams. The people 
we meet there have no ancestry, no past or future, no 
power to harm or to bless. The misfortunes we. en- 
counter, the pains wt endure, the ills we suffer from, fade 
into nothingness when our eyes open. All this is quickly 
realized when we awaken, although we are unaware of 
it while the dream is on, for the simple reason that we 
identify ourselves with the dream and see ourselves as 
taking part in its delusions. In our normal human con- 
sciousness we never question the illusive character and 
texture of dreams, no matter how vividly real they have 
appeared to us. We not only know that there was 
nothing there to frighten or to give pleasure, but that 
there was actually nothing taking place there at all. 

What, then, is there for mankind to do but to awaken 
to the facts of God's day, in which there is no night for 
the dreaming of dreams ? In that day of spiritual awak- 
ening we shall find the " unseen " things " which God 
hath prepared for them that love Him." When the feet 
of returning Israel cress the threshold of the Heavenly 
City, w^hen the eyes of her people open to the conscious- 
ness of things as they are and " see realities face to 
face," the vision of the prophets will be realized, as 
described by St. John in these glowing words : " Behold, 
the tabernacle of God is with men, and he shall dwell 
with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself 
shall be with them, and be their God. And God shall 
wipe away all tears from their eyes ; and there shall be 
no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall 
there be any more pain ; for the former things are passed 
away.'' 






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